141 Inspiring Philosophical Quotes

In a world brimming with constant noise and fleeting trends, the timeless wisdom of philosophers offers a refuge of introspection and insight. Philosophical quotes have the power to provoke thought, inspire change, and illuminate the complexities of human existence. Whether you're seeking guidance, motivation, or a deeper understanding of life's largest questions, the right words can resonate profoundly. We've curated a collection of 141 inspiring philosophical quotes that capture the essence of human thought and emotion. Let these pearls of wisdom challenge your perceptions and enrich your journey through life's intricacies.

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. “Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.” - Victor Hugo

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. “Alan Grant: "There are... far too many words written. Millions and millions of them pouring from the presses every minute. It's a horrible thought." The Midget (his nurse): "You sound constipated.” - Josephine Tey

7. “Le monde ne vaut que par les ultras et ne dure que par les modérés.” - Valéry

8. “But if I decide to decide there’s a different, less selfish, less lonely point to my life, won’t the reason for this decision be my desire to be less lonely, meaning to suffer less overall pain? Can the decision to be less selfish ever be anything other than a selfish decision?” - David Foster Wallace

9. “Hope is the privilege of the weak.” - Gasmaskman

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

11. “It's best to locate the mind first before launching the 'missiles of contention'.” - Gasmaskman

12. “We look not at the things which are what you would call seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporal. But the things that are not seen are eternal.” - Madeleine L'Engle

13. “Where is that man who has forgotten words that I may have a word with him?” - Chuang Tsu

14. “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

15. “The Prayer of the Middle-Aged ManAmid the doctors in the Temple at twelve, between mother & host at Cana implored too soon, in the middle of disciples, the midst of the mob, between High-Priest and Procurator, among the occupiers,between the malefactors, and 'stetit in medio, et dixit, pax vobis' and 'ascensit ad mediam Personarum et caelorum,' dear my Lord,mercy a sinner nailed dead-centre too, pray not to late,-for also Ezra stood between the seven & the six, restoring the new Law.” - John Berryman

16. “Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm; great good fortune comes to failure in the end. All is change; all yields its place and goes; to persevere, trusting in what hopes he has, is courage in a man. The coward despairs.” - Euripides

17. “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

18. “Good apprentices know that they are in the process of becoming masters and that as responsible artisans they must seek to improve upon the knowledge entrusted to them and go further.” - William S. Coperthwaite

19. “A man who discovers his pants are on fire tends to have very little time to worry about somebody else's box of matches” - Jeff Lindsay

20. “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

21. “Where men can't live gods fare no better.” - Cormac McCarthy

22. “The world's a headmaster who works on your faults. I don't mean in a mystical or Jesus way. More how you'll keep tripping over a hidden step, over and over, till you finally understand: Watch out for that step! Everything that's wrong with us, if we're too selfish or too Yessir, Nosir, Three bags full sir or too anything, that's a hidden step. Either you suffer the consequences of not noticing your fault forever or, one day, you do notice it, and fix it. Joke is, once you get it into your brain about that hidden step and think, Hey, life isn't such a shithouse after all again, then BUMP! Down you go, a whole new flight of hidden steps.There are always more.” - David Mitchell

23. “De atunci femeia-ascunde sub pleoape-o taina si-si misca geana parc-ar zice ca ea stie ceva, ce noi nu stim, ce nimenea nu stie , nici Dumnezeu chiar.” - Lucian Blaga

24. “The most important thing you do everyday you live is deciding not to kill yourself.” - Albert Camus

25. “People are not measured by their accomplishments, but by how many times they screw up trying to achieve them.” - James McGregor

26. “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

27. “She was starting to think that it might be fun to be in control of the universe.” - Nicki Elson

28. “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

29. “We spend so much time creating a façade of what we want to project to the world, we almost forget what we ourselves are truly about in the process.” - Jason R. Thrift

30. “Oliver, success is usually a feeling of mere relief, where failure is pain. Happiness, you see, lies in neither, but in sticking to a daily ritual and becoming absorbed in something useful. When the war is over, even the greatest warriors do not exult. They go back to their garden or kitchen or library -- or school -- and resume life.(as said by Mrs. Pearson)” - Adam Gopnik

31. “Who knoweth if to die be but to live, and that called life by mortals be but death?” - Euripides

32. “It is wisdom to recognize necessity when all other courses have been weighed, though as folly it may appear to those who cling to false hope.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

33. “The world begins anew with every birth, my father used to say. He forgot to say, with every death it ends. Or did not think he needed to. Because for a goodly part of his life he worked in a graveyard.” - Sebastian Barry

34. “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

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

36. “Your moral code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines as impossible for him to practice…It demands that he starts, not with a standard of value, but with a standard of evil, which is himself, by means of which he is then to define the good: the good is that which he is not. A sin without volition is a slap at morality and an isolent contradiction in terms: that which is outside the possibility of choice is outside the province of morality. If man is evil by birth, he has no will, no power to change it; if he has no will, he can be neither good nor evil; a robot is amoral. To hold a man’s sin, a fact not open to his choice is a mockery of morality…To punish him for a crime he committed before he was born is a mockery of justice. To hold him guilty in a matter where no innocence exists is a mockery of reason. (The) myth decleares that he ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge-he acquired a mind and became a rational being. It was the knowledge of good and evil-he became a moral being…The evils for which they damn him are reasn, morality, creativeness, joy-all the cardinal values of his existence….the essence of his nature as a man. Whatever he was- that robot in the Garden of Eden, who existed without mind, without values, without labor, without love- he was not a man.” - Ayn Rand

37. “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

38. “For other people, I can't speak - but, personally, I haven't gotten wise on anything. Certainly, I've been through this and that; and when it happens again, I say to myself, Here it is again. But that doesn't seem to help me. In my opinion, I, personally, have gotten steadily sillier and sillier - and that's a fact.” - Christopher Isherwood

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

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

41. “For the elements have the property of moving back to their place in a straight line, but they have no properties which would cause them to remain where they are, or to move other-wise than in a straight line, These rectilinear motions of these four elements when returning to their original place are are of two kinds, either centrifugal,vziz.>the motion of the air and the fire; or centripedal,viz.> the motion of the earth, and the water; and when the elements have reached their original place, they remain at rest.” - Moses Maimonides

42. “Hunger is a wayOf standing outside windowsThe entering takes away.” - Emily Dickinson

43. “The fact is, that what de Sade was trying to bring to the surface of the conscious mind was precisely the thing that revolted that mind . . . From the very first he set before the consciousness things which it could not tolerate.” - George Bataille

44. “How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the human consciousness, may be judged from the fact that, despite the ephemeral brevity of human life, the uncertainty of our existence and the countless enigmas which press upon us from all sides, everyone does not continually and ceaselessly philosophize, but that only the rarest of exceptions do.” - Arthur Schopenhauer

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

46. “Don´t count the days. Make the days count.” - ali

47. “I do, I am” - Benny Bellamacina

48. “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

49. “Socrates: Have you noticed on our journey how often the citizens of this new land remind each other it is a free country? Plato: I have, and think it odd they do this.Socrates: How so, Plato?Plato: It is like reminding a baker he is a baker, or a sculptor he is asculptor.Socrates: You mean to say if someone is convinced of their trade, they haveno need to be reminded.Plato: That is correct.Socrates: I agree. If these citizens were convinced of their freedom, they would not need reminders.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

50. “What kind of God do you believe in? my answer is easy: I believe in a magnificent God” - Elizabeth Gilbert

51. “Life has taught me one supreme lesson. This is that we must—if we are really to live at all, if we are to enjoy the life more abundant promised by the Sages of Wisdom—we must put our convictions into action. My remuneration has been that I have been privileged to act out my faith.” - Margaret Sanger

52. “Es decir..., lo que yo creo es que el hombre piensa en el significado de la vida porque sabe con certeza que va morir algún día. (...) Nadie sabe lo que va a ocurrir. Por eso nosotros, para evolucionar necesitamos la muerte.” - Haruki Murakami

53. “The things that matter don't necessarily make sense.” - Russell Hoban

54. “The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.” - Arthur Conan Doyle

55. “All roads lead to Trantor, and that is where all stars end.” - Isaac Asimov

56. “No matter how many plans you make or how much in control you are, life is always winging it.” - Carroll Bryant

57. “Reality is such an elusive concept.” - Laura Gilfillan

58. “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

59. “Omnia mundi creaturaquasi liber et pictura nobis estin speculum.” - Umberto Eco

60. “Patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.” - Patrick O'Brian

61. “One needs to properly possess only a couple of great thoughts--they shed light on many stretches whose illumination one would never have believed in.” - Georg Simmel

62. “It is common to represent a title, but inspiring to represent a purpose.” - T.F. Hodge

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

64. “The Yorubas have a saying, here, my translation in English--a poor fool is a bigger fool rich. In other words, money only allows and enables you to be more of who you are. My bigger translation? You don't jump essence, you jump environs!” - Dew Platt

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

66. “We go to school so that when we grow up we can make lots of money, and we make lots of money so we can provide for our children, and we have children to provide for our retirement (because we don’t have any money left).” - R.M. ArceJaeger

67. “Sometimes changing the world is as simple as changing the way you look at it.” - R.M. ArceJaeger

68. “The only working model of socialism I have ever seen is in an elementary school classroom.” - R.M. ArceJaeger

69. “At the moment you think all is lost, the future remains.” - R.M. ArceJaeger

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

71. “One species on the planet, and one species only, has reached the point of being able to have an impact on the evolutionary fortunes of all other species and upon the functioning of all ecosystems. We also have, in a way that is not true for any other species, a relationship to the planet as a whole and to the future. We live with all life.” - Walter Truett Anderson

72. “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

73. “-Edel, ¿hay algún modo de conseguir hombres que no hagan daño?Eso debe de habérselo preguntado Dios también, en su momento.” - Alessandro Baricco

74. “Nothing is as it seems, but something is everything it is made out to be.” - Carroll Bryant

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

76. “It is the darkness that makes the light visible, and not the other way around.” - Nancy Venable Raine

77. “This is the story of a man named Eddie and it starts at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It may seem strange to start a story with and ending, but all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time.” - Mitch Albom

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

79. “Any political philosophy is perfect in a given moment...but moments are fleeting.” - Michele Poague

80. “Truths are as much a matter of questions as answers.” - Ozzie Zehner

81. “Irony is the kid who steals music and is stolen by the music.” - MEDVGNO

82. “Please, God,' Ruth would pray, 'don't let me be competitive. Let me realize what a privilege it is to study. Let me remember that knowledge must be pursued for its own sake and please, please stop me wanting to beat Verena Plackett in the exams.'She prayed hard and she meant what she said. But God was busy that autumn as the International Brigade came back, defeated, from Spain, Hitler's bestialities increased, and sparrows everywhere continued to fall.” - Eva Ibbotson

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

84. “Sometimes the hardest journeys are the ones that begin with little hope. But we need to take them anyway.” - Richard Finney

85. “If you make a deal with a fool, don't be surprised when they act foolishly.” - Jeffrey Archer

86. “Flame is the lamp; rest is borrowed.” - R N Prasher

87. “Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them.” - Thomas Mann

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

89. “There is justice in the world, Peter Lake, but it cannot be had without mystery.” - Mark Helprin

90. “That's a stupid question,' said Malachi. 'Because he didn't warn him. He didn't warn anyone.''No, it's a philosophical question,' Kearns corrected him. 'Which makes it useless, not stupid.” - Rick Yancey

91. “It is absurd to hold that a man should be ashamed of an inability to defend himself with his limbs, but not ashamed of an inability to defend himself with speech and reason; for the use of rational speech is more distinctive of a human being than the use of his limbs.” - Aristotle

92. “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

93. “Intelligence is being intelligent enough to know you're not so intelligent as you intelligently once thought.” - Carroll Bryant

94. “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

95. “Never underestimate someone else's pain.” - Jackie Martin

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

97. “It all begins with goodness in the heart.” - Bjorn Street

98. “Without the quest, there can be no epiphany.” - Constantine E. Scaros

99. “‎"We live in a world where those things that we never imagine could ever do something, did the best.” - Jestoni Revealed

100. “Every major technological innovation propels humanity forward to the point of no return.” - Newton Lee

101. “Evil doesn't just go away.” - Heather Graham

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

103. “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

104. “What if he could see this, his own skull, yellow and eroded? Two centuries old. Would he still speak? Would he speak, if he could see it, the grinning, aged skull? What would there be for him to say, to tell the people? What message could he bring?What action would not be futile, when a man could look upon his own aged, yellowed skull?” - Philip K. Dick

105. “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

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

107. “Learn to recognize omens, and follow them” - Paulo Coelho

108. “That's your cruelty, that's what's mean and selfish about you. If you loved your brother, you'd give him a job he didn't deserve, precisely because he didn't deserve it--that would be true love and kindness and brotherhood. Else what's love for? If a man deserves a job, there's no virtue in giving it to him. Virtue is the giving of the undeserved.” - Ayn Rand

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

110. “For, thought Ahab, while even the highest earthly felicities ever have a certain unsignifying pettiness lurking in them, but, at bottom, all heartwoes, a mystic significance, and, in some men, an archangelic grandeur; so do their diligent tracings-out not blue the obvious deduction. To trail the genealogies of these high mortal miseries, carries us at last among the sourceless primogenitures of the gods; so that, in the face of all the glad, hay-making suns, and the softcymballing, round the harvest-moons, we must needs give in to this: that the gods themselves are not for ever glad. The ineffaceable, sad birth-mark in the brow of man, is but the stamp of sorrow in the signers.” - Herman Melville

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

112. “Night sometimes lends such tragic assistance to catastrophe.” - Victor Hugo

113. “When there's a monster under your bed sometimes it really is best not to look.” - Jocelynn Drake

114. “I like having options, alternate lives unlived but always possible.” - Abigail Padgett

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

116. “The grave casts long shadows, Iron Lord," Mirri said. "Long and dark, and in the end no light can hold them back.” - George R.R. Martin

117. “Solitude led to retrospective thinking, and if the past is what you are trying to get away from, then constant distractions in the present are needed.” - R.D. Ronald

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

119. “If only yesterday could be my tomorrow then today wouldn't even matter.” - Carroll Bryant

120. “It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."[I saw hate in a graveyard -- Stephen Fry, The Guardian, 5 June 2005]” - Stephen Fry

121. “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

122. “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

123. “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

124. “Iron deficiency can lead to a wardrobe full of crumpled clothes” - Benny Bellamacina

125. “Every person writes his own book with the example of his life.” - Casper Silk

126. “... the lofty mind of man can be imprisoned by the artifices of its own making.” - E.A. Bucchianeri

127. “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

128. “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

129. “Yesterday I thought about why I felt the need to get up at exactly the same time as the day before and do everything I did the day before. Why? What compels any of us to do the things we do when deep down a part of us just wants to break free from it all?” - J.A. Redmerski

130. “In Unity we can be enslaved, and in Unity we can also come together as individuals." Old Woman” - Eleni Papanou

131. “The best way to move forward is to stop” - Benny Bellamacina

132. “A Pause tends the existence of any definition to its end.” - Ghumakkad Agantuk Ram

133. “Perhaps it is a good thing that we don't live long enough to realize how redundant things seem :)” - G.E.GRAVES

134. “I charge thee, fling away ambition. By that sin fell the angels.” - William Shakespeare

135. “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

136. “انطلاقاً من آلية التفكير بالأصل، التي تؤسس للعجز العربي الراهن، من خلال تدشينها لنظام العقل التابع، إنما تجد ما يؤسسها في قلب البناء الأصولي لكل من الشافعي والأشعري، فإن هذه القراءة تجادل بأنه لا سبيل للانفلات من عوائق تلك الآلية، وآثارها التي لا تزال تتداعى حتى اليوم, استبداداً وتبعية، إلا عبر الارتداد بما يقوم وراء أصول الرائدين الكبيرين من الشرط المتعالي والمجاوز الذي جرى الإيهام بأنه - وليس سواه - هو ما يقوم وراءها، إلى الشرط الإنساني المتعيّن الذي يكاد - منفرداً - أن يحدد بناءها ويفسره، والذى تتجاوب فيه - على نحو مدهش - كل أبعاد الواقع الإنساني وعناصره، من النفسي والاجتماعي والسياسي والمعرفي. وبقدر ما يؤكد هذا التجاوب على إنسانية الشرط الذي انبثقت في إطاره أصول الرائدين، وبما ارتبط بها من آليات وطرائق في التفكير، فإنه يقطع - بذلك - بإمكان تجاوزها الانفلات من سطوتها.وهنا، يلزم التنويه بأن هذه القراءة لا تسعى إلى إنجاز ما هو أكثر من التاكيد على إمكان هذا الارتداد من "المتعالي" إلى "الإنساني”.” - علي مبروك

137. “يتبدي الوحي، إذن، لا بوصفه من قبيل المعرفة المعطاة المفروضة على الوعي كسلطة لا سبيل أمامه إلا لمحض الإذعان والخضوع لها، بقدر ما يمثل نوعاً من الاستجابة الخلاقة المطلوبة لوضع إنساني مأزوم لا يقدر الوعي؛ الذي هو بنية تطورية في جوهرها، على التعاطي معه في مرحلة دنيا من مراحل تطوره. وهكذا فإن الوحي يتبلور كسند ومعين للوعي، ونقطة ارتكاز يستند إليها في سعيه إلى تجاوز أزمة واقعه، ولا يتبلور أبداً كضد ونقيض يفرض نفسه كسلطة متعالية لا يملك الوعي إلا محض التبعية لها.” - علي مبروك

138. “إن الأطلقة( كآلية تفكير تسود فضاء التفكير العربي من دون تمييز بين تراثي وحداثي)- وليس سواها- هي ما يحيل تجارب البشر من تاريخ حي إلي نص أو أصل جامد يقف خارجه; علي النحو الذي يكون معه أشبه بالشاهد المصمت المعلق علي قبر صاحبه, والذي لا يعرف الخلف اللاحق إلا التعبد في ظلاله. وتلك هي جوهر الممارسة السلفية; علي أن يكون معلوما أن هذه الممارسة لا تقف عند حدود من يقال أنهم سلفيو هذا الزمان, بل تتجاوزهم إلي من يقال أنهم حداثيوه أيضا. و سواء مورست هذه الأطلقة, تحت يافطة الدين أو العلمانية, فإنها تمثل خطراً داهماً علي الدولة.” - علي مبروك

139. “تدرك السياسة, وخصوصاً حين تكون قامعة مستبدة، أن العقل المنفتح غير المقيد هو أخطر ما يتهددها؛ وذلك من حيث يؤشر علي أن نقيضها من الحكم الرشيد هو المؤدي- وليس سواه- إلي تحقيق صالح المجموع، ومن هنا ما تسعي إليه، علي الدوام، من إزاحته وإبعاده.وإذ تدرك استحالة إنجاز هذا الإنجاز بما تمتلك من وسائل الترويع والبطش، فإنها تتوسل بالدين والشرع لتضعهما في مواجهة معه، وللغرابة، فإن ذلك لا ينتهي إلي إسكات صوت العقل فحسب، بل إلي تهديد منظومتي الدين والشرع علي نحو كامل.” - علي مبروك

140. “تنبني مُحاججة هذا الكتاب على أن دولة الإرادة المشخصة التي تغطي بعوارها واستبدادها الفضاءات الواسعة لعالم العرب الراهن، إنما تجد ما يؤسسها، واعية أو غير واعية، في الأغوار السحيقة للخطاب الذي تسيَّد فضاء الثقافة في الإسلام؛ والتي ينصهر فيها السياسي مع العقائدي والأنطولوجي؛ وأنه من دون اكتناه ما يتفاعل في هذه الأغوار، والوعي بما تنطوي عليه ويشتغل فيها، وتفكيكه، فإنه لن يكون الانتقال ممكناً أبداً من دولة الطغيان والقمع إلى دولة القانون والشرع، بل سيبقى الاستبدادا عتياً، يعيد إنتاج نفسه من وراء زخارف الديقراطية والحداثة وأكثر زركشاتها لمعاناً وبريقاً” - علي مبروك

141. “Peace becomes a fantasy when egos are promoted and facts distorted.” - Duop Chak Wuol