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Quotes by Philosopher


"Desire is poverty. Desire is the greatest impurity of the mind. Desire is the motive force for action. Desire in the mind is the real impurity. Even a spark of desire is a very great evil."

"Order is a great person's need and their true well being."


"What need is there to weep over parts of life? The whole of it calls for tears."

"It is not your enemies that you need to conquer on the journey to greatness, but yourself."

"Diligent as one must be in learning, one must be as diligent in forgetting; otherwise the process is one of pedantry, not culture."

"We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away."

"As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies-but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious haters: other kinds of spirit hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness."

"To label someone as selfless is symptomatic of having bought the preposterous claim that a human being can have great concern for other human beings and little concern for themselves, or that, when taken to extremes, a human being can have great concern for other human beings and absolutely no concern for themselves."

"It is by teaching that we teach ourselves, by relating that we observe, by affirming that we examine, by showing that we look, by writing that we think, by pumping that we draw water into the well."

"What is required of a working hypothesis is a fine capacity for discrimination."

"True virtue is life under the direction of reason."


"The danger is not lest the soul should doubt whether there is any bread, but lest, by a lie, it should persuade itself that it is not hungry."

"The belief that all genuine education comes about through experience does not mean that all experiences are genuinely or equally educative."


"The obligation of subjects to the sovereign is understood to last as long, and no longer, than the power lasteth by which he is able to protect them."

"What would be left of our tragedies if an insect were to present us his?"

"Drop all masks, and you will find your true face."

"All that is noble in the world's past history, and especially the minds of the great and the good, are never lost."

"But you are alone. Yet I never tell what you are. And if your face lights up my world as no other can - well, this feeling too, when viewed as the mere psychologist has to view it, appears to be simply what all the other friends report about their friends."

"And just because God attains and wins and finds this uniqueness, all our lives win in our union with him the individuality which is essential to their true meaning."


"Being an artist means ceasing to take seriously that very serious person we are when we are not an artist."

"Spinoza says that if a stone which has been projected through the air, had consciousness, it would believe that it was moving of its own free will. I add this only, that the stone would be right. The impulse given it is for the stone what the motive is for me, and what in the case of the stone appears as cohesion, gravitation, rigidity, is in its inner nature the same as that which I recognise in myself as will, and what the stone also, if knowledge were given to it, would recognise as will."

"A whole army, though they can neither write nor read, are not afraid of a platform, which they know is but earth or stone; nor of a cannon, which, without a hand to give fire to it, is but cold iron; therefore a whole army is afraid of one man."

"To take away a man's sanity, answer all his prayers and solve all his problems. Or give him everything and everyone he wants."

"He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals."

"It would be wrong to assume that one must stay with a research programme until it has exhausted all its heuristic power, that one must not introduce a rival programme before everybody agrees that the point of degeneration has probably been reached."

"Pride is pride not because it hates being wrong, but because it loves being wrong: To hate being wrong is to change your opinion when you are proven wrong; whereas pride, even when proven wrong, decides to go on being wrong."

"In contentment and joy are found the height and perfection of all love towards our neighbor."

"Human nature is evil, and goodness is caused by intentional activity."

"The classical example of a successful research programme is Newton's gravitational theory: possibly the most successful research programme ever."

"To halve the number of times that other people hurt you: halve the number of expectations that you have from other people."


"Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth."


"Patience is necessary, and one cannot reap immediately where one has sown."

"So long as I confine my thoughts to my own ideas divested of words, I do not see how I can be easily mistaken."


"Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere."

"What is in great demand, but scarce, is expensive, but even when wisdom is not in demand it is priceless."

"Christ died not so that you could freely go on sinning, and therefore, continue dying; He died rather so that you could freely grow in obedience, and therefore, start living."

"A man with nothing to lend should refrain from borrowing."

"To become truly great, one has to stand with people, not above them."

"You should live in the world but remain untouched by it."


"The man for whom time stretches out painfully is one waiting in vain, disappointed at not finding tomorrow already continuing yesterday."


"It is, from another angle, an attack on requiring proof in philosophy. And it's also the case, I guess, that my temperament is to like interesting, new, bold ideas, and to try and generate them."

"Most women have low standards. All they strive for is a highly paid man."
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