111 Philosophical Quotes

In our journey through life, we often encounter moments that compel us to pause and reflect. What better way to spark introspection than through the profound insights of some of the greatest minds in history? Philosophical quotes have a timeless ability to inspire, challenge, and bring clarity. Whether you are seeking wisdom, solace, or a new perspective, our curated collection of the top 111 philosophical quotes is designed to ignite your curiosity and deepen your understanding of the human experience. Dive in and let these words of wisdom guide you on your path of contemplation and growth.

1. “When the voice of your friend or the page of your book sinks into democratic equality with the pattern of the wallpaper, the feel of your clothes, your memory of last night, and the noises from the road, you are falling asleep. The highly selective consciousness enjoyed by fully alert men, with all its builded sentiments and consecrated ideals, has as much to be called real as the drowsy chaos, and more.” - C.S. Lewis

2. “With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams,it is still a beautiful world.Be cheerful.Strive to be happy.” - Max Ehrmann

3. “One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.” - Kurt Vonnegut

4. “They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or The True Human Beings.It's what most people call themselves, to begin with. And then one day the tribe meets some other People or, if it's not been a good day, The Enemy. If only they'd think up a name like Some More True Human Beings, it'd save a lot of trouble later on” - Terry Pratchett

5. “I have a self-made quote: Celebrate diversity, practice acceptance and may we all choose peaceful options to conflict.” - Donzella Michele Malone

6. “But the only measure that he knows is desire desire for power and so he judges all hearts. Into his heart the thought will not enter that any will refuse it that having the Ring we may seek to destroy it. If we seek this we shall put him out of reckoning.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

7. “Deep down, all the while, she was waiting for something to happen. Like a sailor in distress, she kept casting desperate glances over the solitary waster of her life, seeking some white sail in the distant mists of the horizon. She had no idea by what wind it would reach her, toward what shore it would bear her, or what kind of craft it would be – tiny boat or towering vessel, laden with heartbreaks or filled to the gunwhales with rapture. But every morning when she awoke she hoped that today would be the day; she listened for every sound, gave sudden starts, was surprised when nothing happened; and then, sadder with each succeeding sunset, she longed for tomorrow.” - Gustave Flaubert

8. “I suppose belief is there to prevent people from thinking.” - Gasmaskman

9. “Most men are not wicked... They are sleep-walkers, not evil evildoers.” - Franz Kafka

10. “Man is Nature's most wonderful creature. Torturing him, crushing him, murdering him for his beliefs and ideas is more than a violation of human rights-it is a crime against all humanity.” - Armando Valladares

11. “Dualism::In Ralph Ellison's Invisible ManI am outside of history. i wish i had some peanuts, it looks hungry there in the cage.i am outside of history. its hungrier than i thot.” - Ishmael Reed

12. “Apprentices Needed, Not DisciplesFor many, the knowledge of a Jesus, a Lao-tzu, a Buddha, or a Gandhi is complete and unassailable. But we do them and their vision a disservice when we follow them rather than using what they have taught to build upon as we strive toward our goal of a better society.” - William S. Coperthwaite

13. “It is always easier to take the words of a Jesus, a Gandhi, a Marx, or a Confucius as constituting Holy Writ. This involves less reading, less study, less thought, less conflict, and less independent searching, but it also means less growth toward maturity.” - William S. Coperthwaite

14. “We all can be only who we are, no more, no less.” - Terry Goodkind

15. “The deepest wounds aren't the ones we get from other people hurting us. They are the wounds we give ourselves when we hurt other people.” - Isobelle Carmody

16. “The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn, a philosophical hour, and thus a melancholy hour.” - Ray Bradbury

17. “I never thought it would be easy to serve God," she said. "I just didn't think it would be this hard.” - Frank Herbert

18. “I felt that I wanted the world to be in uniform and at a sort of moral attention forever; I wanted no more riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

19. “If you can keep your head when all about youAre losing theirs and blaming it on you,If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,But make allowance for their doubting too;!” - Rudyard Kipling

20. “I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this.” - Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

21. “If you have the power to change the world for the better, you should do it. That's why people who do nothing are idiots, but idiots who do nothing are life-savers.” - James McGregor

22. “There is such dissociation between what the eyes see and what the mind envisions. The final thought is just a matter of interpretation, coloured by our experiences.” - Anirban Bose

23. “When the white man turns tyrant, it is his own freedom that he destroys.” - George Orwell

24. “Small men command the letter of the law. Great men serve its spirit. For the spirit of the law is justice... and justice is the spirit of God.” - JC Marino

25. “This first glance of a soul which does not yet know itself is like dawn in the heavens; it is the awakening of something radiant and unknown.” - Victor Hugo

26. “there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to take it ready-made from others, instead of forming opinions for himself?” - Arthur Schopenhauer

27. “In every journey comes a moment... one like no other. And in that moment, you must decide between who you are... and who you want to be.” - JC Marino

28. “Work on your character, let life fall into place.” - Sonia Rumzi

29. “Death is nothing to us, because a body that has been dispersed into elements experiences no sensations, and the absence of sensation is nothing to us.” - Epicurus

30. “I have never since entirely freed myself of the impression that this life is a segment of existence which is enacted in a three-dimensional boxlike universe especially set up for it.” - Carl G. Jung

31. “Must this with farce and folly rack myhead unpunish'd ? that with sing-song,Whine me dead?” - Juvenal

32. “philosophy is not suited for the masses, what they need is holiness.” - Nietzsche/Friedrich

33. “Devils so work that things which are not, appear to men as if they were real.” - Lactantius

34. “If I found a job, a project, an idea or a person I wanted-I'd have to depend on the whole world. Everything has strings leading to everything else. We're all so tied together. We're all in a net, the net is waiting and it's precious to you. Do you know who is standing ready to tear it out of your hands? You can't know, it may be so involved and so far away, but someone is ready, and you're afraid of them all. And you cringe and you crawl and you beg and you accept them-just so they'll let you keep it. And look at whom you come to accept.” - Ayn Rand

35. “Love is like death, it must come to us all, but to each his own unique way and time, sometimes it will be avoided, but never can it be cheated, and never will it be forgotten.” - Grim

36. “If, as some savants of consciousness suggest, we are actually agreeing to create, from moment to moment, everything we perceive as real, then it stands to reason that we're also responsible for keeping it going in some harmonious manner.” - Phil Lesh

37. “Time is the Mind of Space.” - Samuel Alexander

38. “Let your eyes talk, mouth listens and ear sleeps.” - Santosh Kalwar

39. “I got interested in the idea that love is often used as a kind of blanket explanation for things. I mean, battered wives, for instance: "Why did you go back to him?" "Oh, I loved him." "Why did you embezzle fifteen million pounds and run away to the other side of the world?" "Oh, well, because I was in love." All that and then you don't ask anything else. I thought if I just say, these people needed love and they found it, then it kind of explained it away. I wanted to look at their behaviour and how love can inspire the best and the very worst in human behaviour but love itself is not behaviour. So I avoided the word 'love' until the very end and it's the last word in the novel. I wanted to explore what people will do when they're in such terrible need of love. If there was a big idea then that was it. Then, of course, I hope that if it's a story worth reading it's the characters themselves who make you want to read it, not the big idea. I don't think a big idea drives a novel usually. Something else has to engage you on a much more kind of personal level. ” - Morag Joss

40. “Aures habent et non audient` - `They have ears but hear not” - Jules Verne

41. “Life has always been a matter of putting one's feet down carefully” - Isobelle Carmody

42. “...in the absence of will power, the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worthless.” - Aleister Crowley

43. “I do, I am” - Benny Bellamacina

44. “Destiny is a lie. Destiny is justification for atrocity. It is the means by which murderers armour themselves against reprimand. It is a word intended to stand in place of ethics, denying all moral context.” - Steven Erikson

45. “Lifes like a painters palette, just when you've got everything worked out the colours change” - Benny Bellamacina

46. “Because beyond their practical function, all gestures have a meaning that exceeds the intention of those who make them; when people in bathing suits fling themselves into the water, it is joy itself that shows in the gesture, notwithstanding any sadness the divers may actually feel. When someone jumps into the water fully clothed, it is another thing entirely: the only person who jumps into the water fully clothed is a person trying to drown; and a person trying to drown does not dive headfirst; he lets himself fall: thus speaks the immemorial language of gestures.” - Milan Kundera

47. “Aquellos de espíritu superior entienden la justicia. Los ordinarios, el beneficio.” - Confucius

48. “We are all full of discourses that we only half understand and half mean.” - Rae Armantrout

49. “You have to set somebody free for them to return” - Candice Night

50. “Dreams are doorways into other dimensions that you forget how to open once you’re awake.” - R.M. ArceJaeger

51. “It's fine to have a dream girl, but you should ask yourself…would you be her dream boy?” - R.M. ArceJaeger

52. “God is like a search engine — He is willing to answer your requests, but you must ask Him the right questions.” - R.M. ArceJaeger

53. “Wisdom too often never comes, so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.” - Felix Frankfurter

54. “Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.” - Roald Dahl

55. “You always look on the dark side of life. I believe in capturing the moment...Joy is so fleeting. You never know when it might be snatched away.” - Susan Wiggs

56. “Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased.” - Italo Calvino

57. “You are sheep among wolves; be wise as serpents, yet innocent as doves.” - Anonymous

58. “Lo que nos hace personas normales es saber que no somos normales.” - Haruki Murakami

59. “Some people remember the sixties better than others do. Some weren't even there, some who were there were not really there, and some who were not really there were "really there".” - Tom Hays

60. “Honesty scares quite a lot of people.” - Beth Myrle Rice

61. “Ein Buch ist ein Spiegel wenn ein Affe hineinsieht so kann kein Apostel heraus gucken.” - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

62. “Until we realize that things might not be we cannot realize that things are.” - G.K. Chesterton

63. “There is much that is strange, but nothing that surpasses man in strangeness” - Sophocles

64. “But perhaps that's why we take snaps...to provide false evidence to underpin the false claim that we were happy. Because the thought that we weren't happy at least for some time during our lives is unbearable. Adults order children to smile in the photos, involve them in the lie, so we smile, we feign happiness.” - Jo Nesbø

65. “Everything you know gained from experience” - Jostein Gaarder

66. “I think I made a better boy than I do a man, I admitted ruefully to the wolf. Why not wait until you've been at it a bit longer and then decide? he suggested.” - Robin Hobb

67. “He who is concerned only with the purity of his own life ruins the great human relations.” - Confucius

68. “If the colour of life turns grey turn the palette the other way” - Benny Bellamacina

69. “I mean really, how could an artistic individual stay grounded in the nitty-gritty of how many minutes per pound meat has to stay in the oven when trying to fathom the creative philosophy behind the greatest artistic minds of the world?” - E.A. Bucchianeri

70. “... true evil needs no reason to exist, it simply is and feeds upon itself.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

71. “Errors do not cease to be errors simply because they’re ratified into law.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

72. “Rubashov had always believed that he knew himself rather well. Being without moral prejudices, he had no illusions about the phenomenon called the "first person singular" and had taken for granted, without particular emotion, that this phenomenon was endowed with certain impulses which people are generally reluctant to admit. Now, when he stood with his forehead against the window or suddenly stopped on the third black tile, he made unexpected discoveries. He found that those processes wrongly known as monologues are really dialogues of a special kind - dialogues in which one partner remains silent while the other, against all grammatical rules, addresses him as "I" instead of "you," in order to creep into his confidence and to fathom his intentions, but the silent partner just remains silent, shuns observation, and even refuses to be localized in time and space.” - Arthur Koestler

73. “How curious it was, [...], that we humans had taken millions of year to crawl up out of the swamps and yet, within minutes of death, we were already tobogganing back down the slope.” - Alan Bradley

74. “Не сме нито глупави, нито умни.Винаги сме някъде по средата.Това ни уморява и ни прави тъжни.Човек трябва да знае къде му е мястото.” - Erich Maria Remarque Translated by A.W. Wheen

75. “The surgeon tells me that you're a sorcerer," Pym said. "Is that so?"Jaki looked to the captain with the glare of the masts in his eyes. "Yes."Pym weighed this disclosure. "You speak with the dead?""Yes."The captain's eyes screwed up intently. "What do they say to you?""They don't talk back."Pym and Mister Blackheart laughed in unison...The captain said, "Mister Blackheart wants to know what kind of sorcerer you are."Jaki pondered a response and finally said, "I was learning to catch souls before my teacher was killed.""Souls, eh? And what do you do with them after you catch them?""I put them back in their bodies.""Ah, then you're telling us you're a surgeon.” - A.A. Attanasio

76. “Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.” - James Baldwin

77. “You know what turns dirt into diamonds?""Pressure. Weight. Heat...""The geological equivalent of torture.” - Laura Argiri

78. “Information is power. Disinformation is abuse of power.” - Newton Lee

79. “The truth was always out there, you just had to find it.” - Heather Graham

80. “If he ever changes his stance on something, it's because he's received new information.” - Heather Graham

81. “What are you thinking?""Just how different everything down there is now, you know, now that I can see.""Everything down there is exactly the same," he said. "You're the one that's different.” - Cassandra Clare

82. “You're an unusual person," she said. "Bill didn't like you, but he never likes anything different. He's so—so prosaic. Don't you think that when a person gets older he should become—broadened in his outlook?” - Philip K. Dick

83. “In the strange dreams of man, there are stories that are unknowingly being built by them. Mine are among the billions that remain untold.” - Brandon Benevides

84. “Things aren't different. Things are things.” - William Gibson

85. “It only becomes art if it touches other people.” - Andreas Eschbach

86. “Often times, "shame" is the word that best describes reality.” - Carroll Bryant

87. “Death twitches my ear;'Live,' he says... 'I'm coming.” - Virgil

88. “Todo pasa y todo queda, / Pero lo nuestro es pasar, / Pasar haciendo caminos,/ Caminos sobre el mar.” - Antonio Machado

89. “Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle.” - Plato

90. “No man is an island, no man stands alone” - Dennis Brown crown prince of reggae

91. “Ah, but in time the heat of noontide passes, and to it there succeed nightfall and dusk, with a return to the quiet fold where for the weary an the heavy-laden there waits sleep, sweet sleep.” - Ivan Turgenev

92. “There may be some truth (atheists) do not need to believe in a god to be good, but then if they do not believe in a god, who do they believe gives the Universal Law of following good and shunning evil? Obviously, mankind. But then that is a dangerous thing, for if a man does not believe in a god capable of giving perfect laws, he is in the position of declaring all laws come from man, and as man is imperfect, he can declare that as fallible men make imperfect laws, he can pick and choose what he wishes to follow, that which, in his own mind seems good. He does not believe in divine retribution, therefore he can also declare his own morality contrary to what the divine may decree simply because he believes there is no divine decree. He may follow his every whim and passion, declaring it to be good when it may be very evil, for he like all men is imperfect, so how can he tell what is verily good? The atheist is in danger of mistaking vice for good and consequently follow another slave master and tyrant, his own physical and mental weakness. Evil would be wittingly or unwittingly perpetrated, therefore, to recognise the existence of a perfect divine being that gives perfect Universal Laws is much better than not to believe in a god, for if there is a perfect god, they will not allow their laws to be broken with impunity as in the case with many corrupt judges on earth, but will punish accordingly in due time. Therefore, to be pious and reverent is the surest path to true freedom as a perfect god will give perfect laws to prevent all manner of slavery, tyranny and moral wantonness, even if we do not understand why they are good laws at times.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

93. “Quand le doigt montre le ciel, l’imbécile regarde le doigt. [When a finger is pointing up to the sky, only a fool looks at the finger.]” - Jean-Pierre Jeunet

94. “You know a person is teaching the truth when no one debates it." ~ Amunhotep El Bey” - Amunhotep El Bey

95. “Love is the unification of two equal opposites to create new love." ~ Amunhotep El Bey” - Amunhotep El Bey

96. “And who says you always have to understand things? You can like them without understanding them -- like 'em better sometimes.” - Dodie Smith I Capture the Castle

97. “A sin is nothing more than regret. Not for doing it once, but doing it again when you know you’re going to regret it.” - Carroll Bryant

98. “The games we play are lessons we learn. The assumptions we make, things we ignore, and things we change make us what we become.” - Terry Pratchett

99. “Do you know how a pearl comes to be?""Oysters make them, from a bit of sand.""Aiyah. From a bit of sand." He rolled the pearl between his fingers. "All pearls begin as something unpleasant that the oysters cannot expel from themselves, even though they may want to. So they embrace these things that will not leave them, shaping them and smoothing away the sharp edges, until over time, they make of these unwanted things great treasures.” - C.L. Wilson

100. “Human beings feel an obligation to have a definate opinion on issues they can never truly know. They need to learn to be satisfied with "I don't know".” - Nathanie Randall

101. “Depression is a red herring," said Nariman. "I think a lot about the past, it's true. But at my age, the past is more present than the here and now. and there is not much percentage in the future.” - Rohinton Mistry

102. “If even a dog's tooth is truly worshipped it glows with light. The venerated object is endowed with power, that is the simple sense of the ontological proof. And if there is art enough a lie can enlighten us as well as the truth. What is the truth anyway, that truth? As we know ourselves we are fake objects, fakes, bundles of illusions. Can you determine exactly what you felt or thought or did?” - Iris Murdoch

103. “Do I ever feel like anything?” - Nyrae Dawn

104. “Even our parents seemed to agree more and more with the television version of things, listening to the reporters' inanities as though they could tell us the truth about our own lives.” - Jeffrey Eugenides

105. “There are times when wisdom cannot be found in the chambers of parliament or the halls of academia but at the unpretentious setting of the kitchen table.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

106. “It is better to burn than to disappear.” - Albert Camus

107. “Is Life itself a dream, I wonder?” - Lewis Carroll

108. “Each man must for himself alone decide what is right and what is wrong, which course is patriotic and which isn't. You cannot shirk this and be a man. To decide against your conviction is to be an unqualified and excusable traitor, both to yourself and to your country, let men label you as they may.” - Mark Twain

109. “We are the sum total of the decisions we have made.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

110. “We all have our safe places, where none are invited. They are lonely rooms full of the musk of memory. Sanctuary rather than adventure.” - Basith

111. “All these mirrorscarnival distortionsof selves we never were.” - Basith