Philosophical Quotes

You call me the unhuman," it might say to him, "and so I really am—for you; but I am so only because...

Because beyond their practical function, all gestures have a meaning that exceeds the intention of t...

metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to l...

This is the story of a man named Eddie and it starts at the end, with Eddie dying in the sun. It may...

Information is power. Disinformation is abuse of power.

Every major technological innovation propels humanity forward to the point of no return.

These were innocent people, so innocent that they thought poverty a crime that wealth would allow th...

Oh, people get used to so many things," said Vadesh, "if only they give them selves a chance.

Shallow sorrows and shallow loves live on... The loves and sorrows that are great are destroyed by t...

There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the des...

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live. It is asking other people to live as one wishes to ...

With which stars do they go on speaking,the rivers that never reach the sea?

Patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which ...

There is a difference between the truth and what we wish were true.

Learn to recognize omens, and follow them

The Universe Conspires....to get what you truly desire

Wandering is never waste, dear boy,' he said. 'While you wander you will find much to wonder about, ...

You put on a bishop's robe and miter, he pondered, and walk around in that, and people bow and genuf...

What if he could see this, his own skull, yellow and eroded? Two centuries old. Would he still speak...

You're an unusual person," she said."Bill didn't like you, but he never likes anything different. He...

I know that I know nothing

Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle.

I am smart because I know I nothing.

I shall try to persuade first the Rulers and soldiers, and then the rest of the community, that the ...

Ask yourself, if there was to be no blame, and if there was to be no praise, who would I be then?

God bless the lawn mower, he thought. Who was the fool who made January first New Year’s Day? No, th...

The people there were gods and midgets and knew themselves mortal and so the midgets walked tall so ...

The zipper displaces the button and a man lacks just that much time to think while dressing at dawn,...

Having power is not nearly as important as what you choose to do with it.

An egoless acceptance of stuckness is a key to an understanding of all Quality.

A lifetime had to be crafted, just like anything else, she thought, it had to be moulded and beaten ...

Depression is a red herring," said Nariman. "I think a lot about the past, it's true. But at my age,...

No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books, either to discover or to control himself.

If you can keep your head when all about youAre losing theirs and blaming it on you,If you can trust...

Ever Tried. Ever Failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.

We will therefore turn to the less ambitious question of what men themselves show by their behavior ...

There is much that is strange, but nothing that surpasses man in strangeness

It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certai...

It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certai...

How dare you? How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault? It's ...

What we like to think of ourselves and what we really are rarely have much in common....

Destiny is a lie. Destiny is justification for atrocity. It is the means by which murderers armour t...

All life is theatre,' he said. 'We are all actors, you and I, in a play which nobody wrote and which...

The awful thing is that if i can forget they're people, it will be no different at all

I begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore ...

The games we play are lessons we learn. The assumptions we make, things we ignore, and things we cha...

They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or The True Human Beings.It's what most pe...

Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them.

Man is now able to fly through the air like a bird, he is able to swim under the sea like a fish, he...

Somewhere in this world there exists an exceptional philosopher named Florie Rotondo.The other day I...

I know who I was, I can tell you who I may have been, but I am, now, only in this line of words I wr...

They can send death at once, but life is slower...

Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting.

...something important is lost if this man has been forced to deny his own nature.

No one is a good historian of the patent, visible, striking, and public life of peoples, if he is no...

Make thought a whirlwind.

Every bird that flies has the thread of the infinite in its claw.

Night sometimes lends such tragic assistance to catastrophe.

Is it not love that knows how to make smooth things rough and rough things smooth?

For there is a general desire to be endlessly remembered and endlessly repeatable.

Death twitches my ear;'Live,' he says... 'I'm coming.

What people had had shed and left--a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in w...

As summer neared, as the evening lengthened there came to the wakeful, the hopeful, walking the beac...

Here was one room; there another. Did religion solve that, or love?

There is a coherence in things, a stability; something... is immune from change and shines out... in...

The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.

That vice has often proved an emancipator of the mind, is one of the most humiliating, but, at the s...

Things aren't different. Things are things.

We Are The Sum Total Of Our Choices...

The individual soul touches upon the world soul like a well reaches for the water table. That which ...

Where is that man who has forgotten words that I may have a word with him?

My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God's side, for God is...

The most important thing you do everyday you live is deciding not to kill yourself.

...if the actor gave his performance without knowing that he was in a play, then his tears would be ...

When I look at my life and at the secret color which it has, I feel as if tears were trembling in my...

One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it

As I usually do when I want to get rid of someone whose conversation bores me, I pretended to agree.

It is better to burn than to disappear.

Very little of the great cruelty shown by men can really be attributed to cruel instinct. Most of it...

...in the absence of will power, the most complete collection of virtues and talents is wholly worth...

Shukhov stared at the ceiling and said nothing. He no longer knew whether he wanted to be free or no...

Very..." She left the word hanging. Very unfinished, thought Isabel. The woman finished her sentence...

Of course, the abolition of Hell meant that such thoughts were now the merest fantasy. Isobel was ag...

The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and ...

Introspection does not need to be a still life. It can be an active alchemy.

Time is a tease

Those who complimented me were those who understood me the least.

Poverty makes a slave out of men. In order to eat he will accept work that gives no pleasure.

The child-like, gum-chewing naïveté , the glamour rooted in despair, the self admiring carelessness,...

The 21st chapter gives the novel the quality of genuine fiction, an art founded on the principle tha...

For the salvation of his soul the Muslim digs a well. It would be a fine thing if each of us were to...

It is absurd to hold that a man should be ashamed of an inability to defend himself with his limbs, ...

The chief proof of man's real greatness lies in his perception of his own smallness.

Truly, the old maid is a most useful person, one of the reserve forces of the community. They talk o...

Rubashov had always believed that he knew himself rather well. Being without moral prejudices, he ha...

How very paltry and limited the normal human intellect is, and how little lucidity there is in the h...

there are very few who can think, but every man wants to have an opinion; and what remains but to ta...

If I found a job, a project, an idea or a person I wanted-I'd have to depend on the whole world. Eve...

Your moral code begins by damning man as evil, then demands that he practice a good which it defines...

Pride is the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s valu...