86 Philosophy Quotes That Will Inspire You To Succeed

Looking for the best philosophy quotes? Our list of the 86 most famous quotes from the greatest philosophers in history will make you think.

Philosophy Quotes That Will Inspire You To Succeed We are all but recent leaves on the same old tree of life and if this life has adapted itself to new functions and conditions, it uses the same old basic principles over and over again. There is no real difference between the grass and the man who mows it. –Albert Szent-Györgyi

The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth — that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured on one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one. –H.L. Mencken

1. “I have heard it remarked, that men are not to be reasoned out of an opinion that they have not reasoned themselves into.” –Fisher Ames

2. “If I make the lashes dark And the eyes more bright And the lips more scarlet, Or ask if all be right From mirror after mirror, No vanity’s displayed: I’m looking for the face I had Before the world was made.” –W.B. Yeats

3. “People have forgotten this truth, “But you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed.” –Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

4. “See without looking, hear without listening, breathe without asking.” –W.H. Auden

5. “still be lovable—as if love did not live in the faults of the beloved only, and draw its breath in an unbroken round of forgiveness!” –Robert Louis Stevenson

6. “The winds of earth are old and sane But tell me, tell me when you know — What happens to a hurricane That hasn’t any place to go?” –David Hertz

7. “When the pain is great enough, we will let anyone be doctor.” –Mignon McLaughlin

8. “You can observe a lot by just looking.” –Yogi Berra

9. “Man can accept pleasure only to the extent that he is willing to accept pain… the rejection of either eliminates both.’ –Thea Alexander

10. “Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them… there is nothing.–Jean Paul Sartre

11. “A gun gives you the body, not the bird.” –Henry David Thoreau

12. “A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never quite sure. –Lee Segall

13. “A stumble may prevent a fall.” –English Proverb Short philosophy quotes

14. “A thing, until it is everything, is noise, and once it is everything it is silence. –Antonio Porchia

15. “A thousand men can’t undress a naked man.” –Greek proverb

16. “A wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can from a mountain top.” –Author Unknown

17. “Admiration and familiarity are strangers.” –George Sand short philosophy quotes

18. “Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.’ –Santayana

19. “Among creatures born into chaos, a majority will imagine an order, a minority will question the order, and the rest will be pronounced insane.”

20. “And you can’t do it alone.”

21. “Ask not the grass to give you green, and later walk all over it.” –Anthony Liccione

22. “Because they know the name of what I am looking for, they think they know what I am looking for!” –Antonio Porchia Quotes about philosophical

23. “Before enlightenment — chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment — chop wood, carry water.” –Zen Buddhist Proverb

24. “Before I travelled my road I was my road.” –Antonio Porchia

25. “Begin at the beginning… and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” –Lewis Carroll

26. “Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it.” –André Gide

27. “Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.” —Aesop

28.”By daily dying I have come to be.” –Theodore Roethke

29. “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.” –Matsuo Basho

30. “Don’t miss the donut by looking through the hole.” –Author Unknown

31. “Each forward step we take we leave some phantom of ourselves behind.” –John Lancaster Spalding

32. “Echo.— The shadow of a sound.”

33. “Specimens of a Patent Pocket Dictionary, For the use of those who wish to understand the meaning of things as well as words,”

34. “Eggs cannot be unscrambled.” –American Proverb Philosophical quotes

35. “Even a clock that does not work is right twice a day.” –Polish Proverb

36. “Extreme remedies are very appropriate for extreme diseases.” –Hippocrates

37. “Gazing at the stars will not save you from the abyss at your feet.” –Dr. Idel Dreimer

38. “Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.” –George

39. “He who has seen present things has seen all, both everything which has taken place from all eternity and everything which will be for time without end; for all things are of one kin and of one form.” –Marcus Aurelius

40. “Hell, life itself can be absurd. But you have to embrace that. If you can’t smile now, how can you possibly laugh in the face of death? –R.” Scott Gemmill

41. “How often one sees people looking far and wide for what they are holding in their hands? Why! I am doing it myself at this very moment.” –Augustus William Hare

42. “I am a part of all that I have met.” –Alfred Lord Tennyson Inspirational life quotes

43. “I am changed forever by the realization of never.” –Terri Guillemets

44. “I am not certain of the hereafter. Frankly, I’m not all that certain of the here.”

45. “I believe that men are generally still a little afraid of the dark, though the witches are all hung, and Christianity and candles have been introduced.” –Henry David Thoreau

46. “I cling to the mortal, and yet long for immortality.” ~Henry James Slack

47. “I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.” –Aleister Crowley

48. “I stop wanting what I am looking for, looking for it.” –Antonio Porchia

49. “I tell you everything that is really nothing, and nothing of what is everything, do not be fooled by what I am saying. Please listen carefully and try to hear what I am not saying.” –Charles C. Finn

50. “I was once a skeptic but was converted by the two missionaries on either side of my nose.”

51. “If a man who cannot count finds a four-leaf clover, is he lucky?” ~Stanislaw J. Lec

52. “If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.” –Francis Bacon

53. “If I am not pleased with myself, but should wish to be other than I am, why should I think highly of the influences which have made me what I am?” –John Lancaster Spalding

54. “If you chase two rabbits, you will not catch either one.” –Russian Proverb Philosophy quotes deep

55. “If you think you’re free, there’s no escape possible.” –Ram Dass

56. “If you understand compound interest, you basically understand the universe.”

57. “In a mist the heights can for the most part see each other; but the valleys cannot.” –Augustus William Hare

58. “In general people experience their present naively, as it were, without being able to form an estimate of its contents; they have first to put themselves at a distance from it — the present, that is to say, must have become the past — before it can yield points of vantage from which to judge the future.” –Sigmund Freud

59. “In the circle of life there is no top, no corner, and no straight lines.” –Mike Dolan

60. “People are divided into two parts: some of them look for and cannot find anything, others find but are not satisfied.” –Mihai Eminescu

61. “In this, the late afternoon of my life, I wonder: am I casting a longer shadow or is my shadow casting a shorter me?.”

62. “It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.” –James Thurber

63. “It is easy to stand a pain, but difficult to stand an itch.” –Chang Ch’ao Short philosophy quotes

64. “It requires a great deal of faith for a man to be cured by his own placebos.” –John L. McClenahan

65. “It would be a very big book that contained all the maybes uttered in a day.” –French Proverb

66. “It’s always Now.” –Eckhart Tolle

67. “It’s very strange when the life you never had flashes before your eyes.” –Terri Minsky

68. “I’ve observed that there are more lines formed than things worth waiting for.” –Robert Brault

69. “Just as the old, looking back, idealize the past, so the young, looking forward, idealize the future. Illusion is the stuff of memory — and is at the heart of hope.”

70. “Just as there is no loss of basic energy in the universe, so no thought or action is without its effects, present or ultimate, seen or unseen, felt or unfelt.” –Norman Cousins

71. “Knock on the sky and listen to the sound.” –Zen Saying

72. “Life has the name of life, but in reality it is death.” –Heraclitus

73. “Losing an illusion makes you wiser than finding a truth.” –Ludwig Börne

74. “Lyulph. Harmonious motion is divine repose.” –Henry James Slack

75. “Man is the only animal who enjoys the consolation of believing in a next life; all other animals enjoy the consolation of not worrying about it.”

76. “May your passion be the kernel of corn stuck between your molars, always reminding you there’s something to tend to.” –Jeb Dickerson

77. “Men are probably nearer the central truth in their superstitions than in their science.’ –Henry David Thoreau Philosophy quotes wisdom

78. “No matter where you go or what you do, you live your entire life within the confines of your head.” –Terry Josephson

79. “No snowflake ever falls in the wrong place.” –Zen Proverb

80. “Nothing can ever happen twice. In consequence, the sorry fact is that we arrive here improvised and leave without the chance to practice… No day copies yesterday, no two nights will teach what bliss is in precisely the same way, with exactly the same kisses. Number of Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired…” –Jonathan Swift

81. “One day, someone showed me a glass of water that was half full. And he said, “Is it half full or half empty?” So I drank the water. No more problem.” –Alexander Jodorowsky

82. “One does what one is; one becomes what one does.” –Robert von Musil

83. “One epitaph is sufficiently comprehensive for most persons:—Here lies A MORTAL. In that word is comprised a brief space of trivial joys, and trivial sorrows. The rest is a phantom.” –William Benton Clulow

84. “Only in the early morning light of day, and of life, can we see the world without its shadows. Truth requires new beginnings.” –Jeb Dickerson

85. “Only that in you which is me can hear what I’m saying.” –Baba Ram Dass

86. “Our greatest pretences are built up not to hide the evil and the ugly in us, but our emptiness. The hardest thing to hide is something that is not there.” –Eric Hoffer

Famous Quotes about Philosophy Quotes About Life

“Do not let the behavior of others destroy your inner peace.” – Dalai Lama

“Nature is beautiful because it looks like Art; and Art can only be called beautiful if we are conscious of it as Art while yet it looks like Nature.” – Immanuel Kant (See also: Nature Quotes)

“It is not enough to have a good mind; the main thing is to use it well.” – Rene Descartes

“Success is a lousy teacher, but failure is a friend, philosopher, and guide.” – Ayushmann Khurrana

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else.” – Plato

“Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.” – Ludwig Wittgenstein

“I think; therefore I am.” – René Descartes

“Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature.” – John Locke

“The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.” – Confucius

“If I cannot do great things, I can do small things in a great way.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

“It does not matter how slowly you go, as long as you do not stop.” – Confucius

“Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.” – William James

“A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it, is committing another mistake.” – Confucius

“A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.” – Sir Francis Bacon

“Is man merely a mistake of God’s? Or God merely a mistake of man’s?.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” – mistakenly attributed to Edmund Burke

“If you are depressed you are living in the past, if you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace, you are living in the present.” – Lao Tzu

“Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.” – Lao Tzu

“Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they be not altered for the better designedly.” – Francis Bacon

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” – J.K. Rowling

“It is absurd and disgraceful to live magnificently and luxuriously when so many are hungry.” – Clement of Alexandria

“It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.” – Bertrand Russell

“The more you know, the more you know you don’t know.” – Aristotle

“It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, and another to put him in possession of truth.” – John Locke

“A philosopher once said, ‘Half of good philosophy is good grammar.’” – A. P. Martinich

“The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.” – John-Jacques Rousseau

“Looking at small advantages prevents great affairs from being accomplished.” – Confucius

“It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” – W. K. Clifford

“All are lunatics, but he who can analyze his delusions is called a philosopher.” – Ambrose Bierce

“He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher… or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.” – Douglas Adams

“Good can exist without evil, whereas evil cannot exist without good.” – Thomas Aquinas

“People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.” – Plato

“It is just that we should be grateful, not only to those with whose views we may agree, but also to those who have expressed more superficial views; for these also contributed something, by developing before us the powers of thought.” – Aristotle

“I only know one thing, and that is I know nothing.” – Socrates

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” – Confucius

“To be satisfied with a little, is the greatest wisdom; and he that increaseth his riches, increaseth his care; but a contented mind is a hidden treasure, and trouble findeth it not.” – Pharaoh Akhnaton

“Never form a friendship with a man who is not better than you.” – Confucius

“The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.” – Aristotle