Philosophical Quotes

“Precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscience you must find yourself at war with your society.”
― James Baldwin

“Patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.”
― Patrick O'Brian, Master & Commander

“That's a stupid question,' said Malachi. 'Because he didn't warn him. He didn't warn anyone.'
'No, it's a philosophical question,' Kearns corrected him. 'Which makes it useless, not stupid.”
― Rick Yancey, The Monstrumologist

“There is much that is strange, but nothing that surpasses man in strangeness”
― Sophocles

“Opinions cannot survive if one has no chance to fight for them.”
― Thomas Mann

“I think I made a better boy than I do a man, I admitted ruefully to the wolf.
Why not wait until you've been at it a bit longer and then decide? he suggested.”
― Robin Hobb, Assassin's Quest

“We are the sum total of the decisions we have made.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri

“I shall try to persuade first the Rulers and soldiers, and then the rest of the community, that the upbringing and education we have given them was all something that happened to them only in a dream. In reality they were fashioned and reared, and their arms and equipment manufactured, in the depths of the earth, and Earth herself, their mother, brought them up, when they were complete, into the light of day; so now they must think of the land in which they live as their mother and protect her if she is attacked, while their fellow citizens they must regard as brothers born of the same mother earth…. That is the story. Do you know of any way of making them believe it?”
“Not in the first generation,” he said, “but you might succeed with the second, and later generations.”
― Plato, The Republic

“But perhaps that's why we take snaps...to provide false evidence to underpin the false claim that we were happy. Because the thought that we weren't happy at least for some time during our lives is unbearable. Adults order children to smile in the photos, involve them in the lie, so we smile, we feign happiness.”
― Jo Nesbø, Phantom

“Without the quest, there can be no epiphany.”
― Constantine E. Scaros, Reflections on a Simple Twist of Fate: Literature, Art and Parkinson's Disease

“Are you dying?"
Cato lit his cigarette. "It's not acute, perhaps, but we're all dying, Harry.”
― Jo Nesbø, Phantom

“I ... having filled my life with the spiritual blessings Christianity gave me, brimful of these blessings and living by them, I, like a child, not understanding them, destroy them -- that is, I wish to destroy that by which I live.”
― Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

“Our physical world seems ready and able to accommodate the needs of the spiritually awakened new Superhuman. The constraints or demands of our material world are not the real problem; it is our own spiritual awareness and philosophical wisdom that is lagging behind.”
― Anthon St. Maarten, Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny

“We are all full of discourses that we only half understand and half mean.”
― Rae Armantrout

“Well, it is in fact possible to put things behind you, Rakel. The art of dealing with ghosts is to dare to look at them long and hard until you know that is what they are. Ghosts. Lifeless, powerless ghosts.”
― Jo Nesbø, Phantom

“You have the ability to find all the answers--if you let yourself do so.”
― Heather Graham, Phantom Evil

“What people had had shed and left--a pair of shoes, a shooting cap, some faded skirts and coats in wardrobes--those alone kept the human shape and in the emptiness indicated how once they were filled and animated; how once hands were busy with hooks and buttons; how once the looking-glass had held a face; had held a world hollowed out in which a figure turned, a hand flashed, the door opened, in came children rushing and tumbling; and went out again. Now, day after day, light turned, like a flower reflected in water, its sharp image on the wall opposite. Only the shadows of the trees, flourishing in the wind, made obeisance on the wall, and for a moment darkened the pool in which light reflected itself; or birds, flying, made a soft spot flutter slowly across the bedroom floor.”
― Virginia Woolf

“The sage is sick of being sick (Tao Te Ching)”
― Robert Baohm, Real Happiness Challenge

“Rubashov had always believed that he knew himself rather well. Being without moral prejudices, he had no illusions about the phenomenon called the "first person singular" and had taken for granted, without particular emotion, that this phenomenon was endowed with certain impulses which people are generally reluctant to admit. Now, when he stood with his forehead against the window or suddenly stopped on the third black tile, he made unexpected discoveries. He found that those processes wrongly known as monologues are really dialogues of a special kind - dialogues in which one partner remains silent while the other, against all grammatical rules, addresses him as "I" instead of "you," in order to creep into his confidence and to fathom his intentions, but the silent partner just remains silent, shuns observation, and even refuses to be localized in time and space.”
― Arthur Koestler

“What if he could see this, his own skull, yellow and eroded? Two centuries old. Would he still speak? Would he speak, if he could see it, the grinning, aged skull? What would there be for him to say, to tell the people? What message could he bring?

What action would not be futile, when a man could look upon his own aged, yellowed skull?”
― Philip K. Dick, The Skull

“Evil is done by the living.”
― Heather Graham, Phantom Evil

“Evil doesn't just go away.”
― Heather Graham, Phantom Evil

“I do, I am”
― Benny Bellamacina, Piddly Poems for Children: Volume 1

“Δε γίνεται να εμποδίσεις τη δημιουργία μαρτύρων. Το μόνο που μπορεί κανείς να κάνει είναι να κοιτάξει να περιορίσει τον αριθμό τους. Αν ήξερα κάποιους Χριστιανούς τον καιρό του Νέρωνα, θα προσπαθούσα να τους σώσω απ' τα λιοντάρια, εξηγώντας τους πως είναι προτιμότερο να ζει κανείς με την πίστη του, παρά να πεθαίνει γι' αυτήν.”
― Graham Greene, The Comedians

“Some people remember the sixties better than others do. Some weren't even there, some who were there were not really there, and some who were not really there were "really there".”
― Tom Hays, Twisted by the Wind: A Journal of Inspirations, Conversations and Imaginations

“Flame is the lamp; rest is borrowed.”
― R. N. Prasher

“It meant leading my meta-life. Meta-life is the opposite of living in the moment. It's the syndrome of simultaneously having an experience and being an observer commenting on and questioning the experience. By observing something, you change it, sometimes for the better, but in my experience, usually for the worse. You know youre in the meta-life when you're critiquing an experience while you're having it (This is fun but it would be more fun if . . .), trying to talk yourself into happiness because you should feel it (It's a beautiful day, and all I really need to be happy are fresh air and sunshine), or worrying that youre not getting any closer to the "Big Important Things" (Sure, this is a great date, but what are the odds this guy would ever marry someone like me?).”
― Holly Shumas, Five Things I Can't Live Without

“A book without conversation, is like a life without friends, you know it's going to end, but you want it to be soon.”
― Ken Balneaves

“If he ever changes his stance on something, it's because he's received new information.”
― Heather Graham, Phantom Evil

“If water was beer I'd be a teetotaler”
― Benny Bellamacina, Philosophical Uplifting Quotes and Poems