Library

“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”

Richard Feynman · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“It is not things that disturb people, but their judgements about things.”

Epictetus · Stoicism

“It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.”

Seneca · Stoicism

“Read not to contradict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider.”

Francis Bacon · Empiricism

“The life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Thomas Hobbes · Political philosophy

“I put for a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death.”

Thomas Hobbes · Political philosophy

“Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas.”

John Locke · Empiricism

“No one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”

John Locke · Empiricism

“Their esse is percipi, nor is it possible they should have any existence out of the minds or thinking things which perceive them.”

George Berkeley · Idealism / Empiricism

“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”

David Hume · Empiricism

“Custom, then, is the great guide of human life.”

David Hume · Empiricism

“How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”

Adam Smith · Moral philosophy

“Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts.”

Jeremy Bentham · Utilitarianism

“I do not wish them to have power over men, but over themselves.”

Mary Wollstonecraft · Enlightenment feminism

“Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.”

Mary Wollstonecraft · Enlightenment feminism

“I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.”

David Hume · Empiricism

“All the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit, Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact.”

David Hume · Empiricism

“If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames.”

David Hume · Empiricism

“I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not.”

David Hume · Empiricism

“The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery.”

David Hume · Empiricism

“I am confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself in the most deplorable condition imaginable.”

David Hume · Empiricism

“All reasonings concerning matter of fact seem to be founded on the relation of Cause and Effect.”

David Hume · Empiricism

“By art is created that great Leviathan called a Commonwealth, which is but an artificial man.”

Thomas Hobbes · Political philosophy

“The power of a man is his present means to obtain some future apparent good.”

Thomas Hobbes · Political philosophy

“Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself.”

John Locke · Empiricism

“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”

Adam Smith · Moral philosophy

“The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour seems to have been the effects of the division of labour.”

Adam Smith · Moral philosophy

“Prejudice is of ready application in the emergency; it previously engages the mind in a steady course of wisdom and virtue.”

Edmund Burke · Political philosophy

“Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure.”

Jeremy Bentham · Utilitarianism

“Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman's sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and, roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.”

Mary Wollstonecraft · Enlightenment feminism

“Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.”

Francis Bacon · Empiricism

“But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished for ever.”

Edmund Burke · Political philosophy

“The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”

Jeremy Bentham · Utilitarianism

“My own sex, I hope, will excuse me, if I treat them like rational creatures, instead of flattering their fascinating graces, and viewing them as if they were in a state of perpetual childhood, unable to stand alone.”

Mary Wollstonecraft · Enlightenment feminism

“What is truth? said jesting Pilate, and would not stay for an answer.”

Francis Bacon · Empiricism

“During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man.”

Thomas Hobbes · Political philosophy

“To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider what state all men are naturally in, and that is a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man.”

John Locke · Empiricism

“Man naturally desires, not only to be loved, but to be lovely; or to be that thing which is the natural and proper object of love.”

Adam Smith · Moral philosophy

“A state without the means of some change is without the means of its conservation.”

Edmund Burke · Political philosophy

“The interest of the community then is, what?—the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.”

Jeremy Bentham · Utilitarianism

“Contending for the rights of woman, my main argument is built on this simple principle, that if she be not prepared by education to become the companion of man, she will stop the progress of knowledge and virtue.”

Mary Wollstonecraft · Enlightenment feminism

“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against their will, is to prevent harm to others.”

John Stuart Mill · Liberalism

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”

John Stuart Mill · Liberalism

“The legal subordination of one sex to the other is wrong in itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement.”

John Stuart Mill · Liberalism

“Do not block the way of inquiry.”

Charles Sanders Peirce · Pragmatism

“Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.”

Charles Sanders Peirce · Pragmatism

“The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.”

William James · Pragmatism

“There can be no difference anywhere that does not make a difference elsewhere.”

William James · Pragmatism

“Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge.”

Charles Darwin · Thinkers beyond philosophy

“Education is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.”

John Dewey · Pragmatism