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Quotes by Philosopher
"Still, one can be honest yet quite mistaken."
20
"I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage."
20
"Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted."
20
"But as men grow more industrialised and regimented, the kind of delight that is common in children becomes impossible to adults because they are always thinking of the next thing and cannot let themselves be absorbed in the moment. This habit of thinking of the 'next thing' is more fatal to any kind of aesthetic excellence than any other habit of mind that can be imagined, and if art, in any important sense, is to survive it will not be by the foundation of solemn academies, but by recapturing the capacity for wholehearted joys and sorrows which prudence and foresight have all but destroyed."
20
"Where there is no hope, it is incumbent on us to invent it."
20
"The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves."
20
"All women are brought up from the very earliest years in the belief that their ideal of character is the very opposite to that of men; not self-will,and government by self-control, but submission and yielding to the control of others. All the moralities tell them that it is their nature to live fir others;to make complete abnegation of themselves,and to have no life but in their affections."
20
"I am obliged to believe certain opinions myself. No man's belief will save me except my own."
20
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts."
20
"From whichever side I start, I think I am in an old place where others have been before me."
20
"The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes."
20
"So when a man surrenders to the sound of music and lets its sweet, soft, mournful strains, which we have just described, be funnelled into his soul through his ears, and gives up all his time to the glamorous moanings of song, the effect at first on his energy and initiative of mind, if he has any, is to soften it as iron is softened in a furnace, and made workable instead of hard and unworkable: but if he persists and does not break the enchantment, the next stage is that it melts and runs, till the spirit has quite run out of him and his mental sinews (if I may so put it) are cut, and he has become what Homer calls "a feeble fighter"."
20
"There are more ways of outraging speech than contradiction merely."
20
"It happened that a fire broke out backstage in a theater. The clown came out to inform the public. They thought it was a jest and applauded. He repeated his warning. They shouted even louder. So I think the world will come to an end amid the general applause from all the wits who believe that it is a joke."
20
"It would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh. They stretch out and there's no end to them and they leave a funny taste in the mouth. Then there are words, inside the thoughts, unfinished words, a sketchy sentence which constantly returns...It goes, it goes ... and there's no end to it. It's worse than the rest because I feel responsible and have complicity in it. For example, this sort of painful rumination: I exist, I am the one who keeps it up. I."
20
"He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed."
Will,
20
"In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened."
20
"The opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself."
20
"Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority."
20
"They say that Caliph Omar, when consulted about what had to be done with the library of Alexandria, answered as follows: 'If the books of this library contain matters opposed to the Koran, they are bad and must be burned. If they contain only the doctrine of the Koran, burn them anyway, for they are superfluous.' Our learned men have cited this reasoning as the height of absurdity. However, suppose Gregory the Great was there instead of Omar and the Gospel instead of the Koran. The library would still have been burned, and that might well have been the finest moment in the life of this illustrious pontiff."
20
"It is only in our decisions that we are important."
20
"Noble deeds that are concealed are most esteemed."
20
"Let it not be said that I have said nothing new. The arrangement of the material is new."
20
"All that philosophers have done is interpret the world in different ways. It is our job to change it."
20
"Every word is a prejudice."
20
"Philosophy: Impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas."
20
"Sirs, if you are listening and are not acting, it is like a man who is always tilling but never sowing. It is better not to listen to a truth than to listen without acting, for then it becomes a poison."
20
"Why do people respect the package rather than the man?"
20
"Mountains should be climbed with as little effort as possible and without desire. The reality of your own nature should determine the speed. If you become restless speed up. If you become winded slow down. You climb the mountain in an equilibrium between restlessness and exhaustion. Then when you're no longer thinking ahead each footstep isn't just a means to an end but a unique event in itself."
20
"A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears."
20
"There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character."
20
"Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the "leaf": the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted--but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model."
20
"Man was born free and everywhere he is in shackles."
20
"A sweet soul will take you further than a sweet tongue."
20
"It is a revenge the devil sometimes takes upon the virtuous, that he entraps them by the force of the very passion they have suppressed and think themselves superior to."
20
"Practice yourself for heaven's sake in little things and thence proceed to greater."
20
"Some women wear a miniskirt to reveal their thighs, some wear one to conceal their age."
20
"When one treats people with benevolence, justice, and righteoousness, and reposes confidence in them, the army will be united in mind and all will be happy to serve their leaders'."
20
"All mankind's unhappiness derives from one thing: his inability to know how to remain in repose in one room."
20
"Every man ought to say to himself, "Am I really the kind of man who has the right to act in such a way that humanity might guide itself by my actions?"
20
"Thunder roars but does not strike. Lightning strikes but does not roar. Choose to be lightning."
20
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