Philosophy Quotes

“Life did not intend to make us perfect. Whoever is perfect belongs in a museum.”

— Erich Maria Remarque

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

— C. S. Lewis

“If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.”

— Virginia Woolf

“I didn’t like having to explain to them, so I just shut up, smoked a cigarette, and looked at the sea.”

— Albert Camus

“Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.”

— Ambrose Bierce

“To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but what he aspires to.”

— Kahlil Gibran

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I'm not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you've felt that way.”

— Charles Bukowski

“Nobody's so damn well educated that you can't learn ninety percent of what he knows in six weeks. The other ten percent is decoration.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

“No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

“One must dare to be happy.”

— Gertrude Stein

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”

— Albert Camus

“Rudeness is the weak man's imitation of strength.”

— Eric Hoffer

“You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

“The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

— Sylvia Plath

“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”

— Robert Frost

“Boredom and stupidity and patriotism, especially when combined, are three of the greatest evils of the world we live in.”

— Robertson Davies

“It is good to love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is well done.”

— Vincent van Gogh

“Do not wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day.”

— Albert Camus

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

— Bertrand Russell

“The fabric of democracy is always fragile everywhere because it depends on the will of citizens to protect it, and when they become scared, when it becomes dangerous for them to defend it, it can go very quickly.”

— Margaret Atwood

“I have a deeply hidden and inarticulate desire for something beyond the daily life.”

— Virginia Woolf

“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.”

— Douglas Adams

“Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.”

— Alain de Botton

“Ideologies separate us. Dreams and anguish bring us together.”

— Eugène Ionesco

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

— Simone Weil

“No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen.”

— Alan Watts

“The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose.”

— James Baldwin

“When the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune.”

— Albert Camus

“The free soul is rare, but you know it when you see it – basically because you feel good, very good, when you are near or with them.”

— Charles Bukowski

“The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.”

— Oscar Wilde