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Quotes by Philosopher

"The biggest melon started off a small seed."


"This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it."


"Not all intelligence can be artificial now, so if we make a mistake, the consequences are no longer simply located within an institution or a national culture."

"Since in early youth it cannot be known what ends are likely to occur to us in the course of life, parents seek to have their children taught a great many things, and provide for their skill in the use of means for all sorts of arbitrary ends, of none of which can they determine whether it may not perhaps hereafter be an object to determine their pupil, but which it is at all events possible that he might aim at; and this anxiety is so great that they commonly neglect to form and correct their judgement on the value of the things which may be chosen as ends."

"Naturally, in the course of my life I have made lots of mistakes, large and small, for one reason or another, but at the heart of it all, every time I made a mistake it was because I was not radical enough."

"The dictum that truth always triumphs over persecution is one of the pleasant falsehoods which men repeat after one another till they pass into commonplaces, but which all experience refutes."

"Freedom is absolutely necessary for the progress in science and the liberal arts."


"Just as I shall select my ship when I am about to go on a voyage, or my house when I propose to take a residence, so I shall choose my death when I am about to depart from life."

"A man of honour should never forget what he is because he sees what others are."

"All good Literature rests primarily on insight."

"When one has finished building one's house, one suddenly realizes that in the process one has learned something that one really needed to know in the worst way - before one began."

"Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted... but to weigh and consider."

"No great thing is created suddenly."


"Oppression that is clearly inexorable and invincible does not give rise to revolt but to submission."

"A calm night is open to all the truths."

"In love, one and one are one."


"My soul always reverts to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. There at least one feels that it's human beings talking. There people hate, people love, people murder their enemy and curse his descendants through all generations, there people sin."

"Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small."


"Let wickedness escape as it may at the bar it never fails of doing justice upon itself for every guilty person is his own hangman."

"Pay attention to your enemies, for they are the first to discover your mistakes."

"Without doubt, it is a delightful harmony when doing and saying go together."

"It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living."

"To write well, express yourself like the common people, but think like a wise man."

"You cannot force a dry well to yield water."

"Mencius said that human nature is good. I disagree with that."


"To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand."


"When all actions are mathematically calculated, they also take on a stupid quality."

"The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal name. The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth. The named is the mother of ten thousand things. Ever desireless, one can see the mystery. Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations. These two spring from the same source but differ in name; this appears as darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gate to all mystery."

"Stay away from lazy parasites, who perch on you just to satisfy their needs, they do not come to alleviate your burdens, hence, their mission is to distract, detract and extract, and make you live in abject poverty."

"Stubborn and ardent clinging to one's opinion is the best proof of stupidity."

"You cannot reconcile creativeness with technical achievement. You may be perfect in playing the piano, and not be creative. You may be able to handle color, to put paint on canvas most cleverly, and not be a creative painter...having lost the song, we pursue the singer. We learn from the singer the technique of song, but there is no song; and I say the song is essential, the joy of singing is essential. When the joy is there, the technique can be built up from nothing; you will invent your own technique, you won't have to study elocution or style. When you have, you see, and the very seeing of beauty is an art."

"Daily life is governed by an economic system in which the production and consumption of insults tends to balance out."

"The tendency to whining and complaining may be taken as the surest sign symptom of little souls and inferior intellects."

"Harsh counsels have no effect; they are like hammers, which are always repulsed by the anvil."

"By lighting another's candle you brighten your own."

"All our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling."

"The lonely wanderer, who watches by the seashore the waves that roll between him and his home, talks of cruel facts, material barriers that, just because they are material, and not ideal, shall be the irresistible foes of his longing heart."

"Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out."

"Conquering any difficulty always gives one a secret joy, for it means pushing back a boundary-line and adding to one's liberty."

"It's not at all hard to understand a person it's only hard to listen without bias."

"To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman."

"I belong to a nation which for the past four years has begun to relive the course of her entire history and which is calmly and surely preparing out of the ruins to make another history. Your nation, on the other hand, has received from its sons only the love it deserved, which was blind. A nation is not justified by such love. That will be your undoing. And you who were already conquered in your greatest victories, what will you be in the approaching defeat?"

"Ordinary language carries with it conditions of meaning which it is easy to recognize by classifying the contexts in which the expression is employed in a meaningful manner."
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