Philosophy Quotes

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.

Be the change that you wish to see in the world.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival.

Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.

It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.

A day without laughter is a day wasted.

Have you ever noticed how ‘What the hell’ is always the right decision to make?

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

May you live every day of your life.

We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.

If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!

Be the reason someone smiles. Be the reason someone feels loved and believes in the goodness in people.

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.

One, remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Two, never give up work. Work gives you meaning and purpose and life is empty without it. Three, if you are lucky enough to find love, remember it is there and don't throw it away.

You do not write your life with words...You write it with actions. What you think is not important. It is only important what you do.

To choose doubt as a philosophy of life is akin to choosing immobility as a means of transportation.

For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You'd be surprised how far that gets you.

Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.

Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.

There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!

Music is ... A higher revelation than all Wisdom & Philosophy

A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.

Make improvements, not excuses. Seek respect, not attention.

I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further.

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.

There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.

If you ever find yourself in the wrong story, leave.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

The past has no power over the present moment.

Do not fear failure but rather fear not trying.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think

A truth that's told with bad intent Beats all the lies you can invent.

Simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures. Simple in actions and thoughts, you return to the source of being. Patient with both friends and enemies, you accord with the way things are. Compassionate toward yourself, you reconcile all beings in the world.

Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.

Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.

Happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.

Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!

Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.

We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.

Don't Just Don't just learn, experience. Don't just read, absorb. Don't just change, transform. Don't just relate, advocate. Don't just promise, prove. Don't just criticize, encourage. Don't just think, ponder. Don't just take, give. Don't just see, feel. Don’t just dream, do. Don't just hear, listen. Don't just talk, act. Don't just tell, show. Don't just exist, live.

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

The more one judges, the less one loves.

In the end these things matter most: How well did you love? How fully did you live? How deeply did you let go?

You only live twice: Once when you are born And once when you look death in the face

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter

A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.

Tiger got to hunt, bird got to fly; Man got to sit and wonder 'why, why, why?' Tiger got to sleep, bird got to land; Man got to tell himself he understand.

Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

I don’t know what’s worse: to not know what you are and be happy, or to become what you’ve always wanted to be, and feel alone.

If you win, you need not have to explain...If you lose, you should not be there to explain!

A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.

The easy confidence with which I know another man's religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people we personally dislike.

Life has no remote....get up and change it yourself!

Well, I must endure the presence of a few caterpillars if I wish to become acquainted with the butterflies.

It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.

Like all magnificent things, it's very simple.

Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.

It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

Let children read whatever they want and then talk about it with them. If parents and kids can talk together, we won't have as much censorship because we won't have as much fear.

Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.

The outer world is a reflection of the inner world. Other people’s perception of you is a reflection of them; your response to them is an awareness of you.

If you believe very strongly in something, stand up and fight for it.

Don't be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you.

I would believe only in a God that knows how to dance.

Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.

The true man wants two things: danger and play. For that reason he wants woman, as the most dangerous plaything.

The first duty of a man is to think for himself

Perhaps home is not a place but simply an irrevocable condition.

Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, "Is life a multiple choice test or is it a true or false test?" ...Then a voice comes to me out of the dark and says, "We hate to tell you this but life is a thousand word essay.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you but answer, "He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.

An intellectual? Yes. And never deny it. An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself. I like this, because I am happy to be both halves, the watcher and the watched. "Can they be brought together?" This is a practical question. We must get down to it. "I despise intelligence" really means: "I cannot bear my doubts.

Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?

It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing—they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me.

Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Heres Tom with the Weather.

Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.

Love is blind, they say; sex is impervious to reason and mocks the power of all philosophers. But, in fact, a person's sexual choice is the result and sum of their fundamental convictions. Tell me what a person finds sexually attractive and I will tell you their entire philosophy of life. Show me the person they sleep with and I will tell you their valuation of themselves. No matter what corruption they're taught about the virtue of selflessness, sex is the most profoundly selfish of all acts, an act which they cannot perform for any motive but their own enjoyment - just try to think of performing it in a spirit of selfless charity! - an act which is not possible in self-abasement, only in self-exultation, only on the confidence of being desired and being worthy of desire. It is an act that forces them to stand naked in spirit, as well as in body, and accept their real ego as their standard of value. They will always be attracted to the person who reflects their deepest vision of themselves, the person whose surrender permits them to experience - or to fake - a sense of self-esteem .. Love is our response to our highest values - and can be nothing else.

Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.