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Showing 251–300 of 534 quotations
“There remains but one account of a way, that it is. On this way there are very many signs, that what-is is ungenerated and imperishable, whole, of a single kind, unshaken, and complete.”
Parmenides · Eleatic
“Nor was it ever, nor will it be, since it is now, all together, one, continuous.”
Parmenides · Eleatic
“Not from itself, not from another, not from both, and not without a cause: nowhere and never does any existing thing arise.”
Nāgārjuna · Madhyamaka
“Something that is not dependently arisen does not exist. Therefore a non-empty thing does not exist.”
Nāgārjuna · Madhyamaka
“There is not the slightest difference between cyclic existence and nirvana. There is not the slightest difference between nirvana and cyclic existence.”
Nāgārjuna · Madhyamaka
“Emptiness is proclaimed by the victorious ones as the remedy for all views. Those who take emptiness as a view are said to be incurable.”
Nāgārjuna · Madhyamaka
“You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Augustine of Hippo · Christian Platonism
“Give me chastity and continence, but not yet.”
Augustine of Hippo · Christian Platonism
“In every adversity of fortune, the unhappiest kind of misfortune is to have been happy.”
Boethius · Late Roman philosophy
“If you are in possession of yourself, you possess something you would never wish to lose, and something fortune cannot take from you.”
Boethius · Late Roman philosophy
“All the joy the world contains has come through wishing happiness for others. All the misery the world contains has come through wanting pleasure for oneself.”
Śāntideva · Mahāyāna Buddhism
“If a problem can be remedied, why be unhappy about it? If it cannot be remedied, what use is being unhappy about it?”
Śāntideva · Mahāyāna Buddhism
“To cover all the earth with sheets of leather — where could such amounts of skin be found? But with the leather soles of just my shoes it is as though I cover all the earth!”
Śāntideva · Mahāyāna Buddhism
“One of us must imagine himself so as to be created all at once and perfect, but with his sight veiled so that he cannot see anything external, and floating in the air, so that he feels nothing. Would he affirm the existence of his self? He would not doubt the affirmation of his self.”
Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) · Islamic Aristotelianism
“What I seek is certain knowledge, in which the thing known is disclosed so that no doubt remains, and the mind cannot even entertain the possibility of error.”
Al-Ghazālī · Islamic philosophy
“God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived.”
Anselm of Canterbury · Scholasticism
“Truth does not oppose truth; rather, it agrees with it and bears witness to it.”
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) · Aristotelianism
“One should accept the truth from whatever source it proceeds.”
Maimonides · Jewish philosophy
“The highest degree of charity is to strengthen a person until he no longer needs to depend on others.”
Maimonides · Jewish philosophy
“To study the buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things.”
Dōgen · Sōtō Zen
“Law is an ordinance of reason for the common good, made by one who has care of the community, and promulgated.”
Thomas Aquinas · Scholasticism
“The existence of God can be proved in five ways.”
Thomas Aquinas · Scholasticism
“Human social organization is something necessary. The philosophers expressed this fact by saying: 'Man is "political" by nature.'”
Ibn Khaldūn · Historiography / social theory
“In the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”
Erasmus · Christian humanism
“The chief element of happiness is this: to want to be what you are.”
Erasmus · Christian humanism
“It is much safer to be feared than loved, if one cannot be both.”
Niccolò Machiavelli · Political realism
“Fortune is the arbiter of half our actions, but she still leaves the other half, or close to it, for us to govern.”
Niccolò Machiavelli · Political realism
“Knowledge is the beginning of action and action the completion of knowledge.”
Wang Yangming · Neo-Confucianism (School of Mind)
“All the peoples of the world are human beings.”
Bartolomé de las Casas · Spanish scholasticism
“What do I know?”
Michel de Montaigne · Renaissance humanism
“To philosophise is to learn how to die.”
Michel de Montaigne · Renaissance humanism
“Knowledge itself is power.”
Francis Bacon · Empiricism
“I think, therefore I am.”
René Descartes · Rationalism
“The first rule was never to accept anything as true that I did not evidently know to be such.”
René Descartes · Rationalism
“Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed.”
Blaise Pascal · Early modern philosophy
“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”
Blaise Pascal · Early modern philosophy
“A free person thinks of death least of all things, and their wisdom is a meditation not on death but on life.”
Baruch Spinoza · Rationalism
“God, or Nature.”
Baruch Spinoza · Rationalism
“The monads have no windows, through which anything could come in or go out.”
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz · Rationalism
“Had Aristotle cooked, he would have written much more.”
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz · Baroque scholasticism
“Foolish men who accuse women without reason, not seeing that you are the cause of the very thing you blame.”
Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz · Baroque scholasticism
“Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”
Voltaire · Enlightenment
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”
Voltaire · Enlightenment
“A wise person proportions their belief to the evidence.”
David Hume · Empiricism
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau · Enlightenment
“Posterity is for the philosopher what the other world is for the religious person.”
Denis Diderot · Enlightenment
“Only great passions can elevate the soul to great things.”
Denis Diderot · Enlightenment
“What has never been called into question has not been proved. What has not been examined without prejudice has never been well examined. Scepticism is therefore the first step towards the truth.”
Denis Diderot · Enlightenment
“We must become the impartial spectators of our own character and conduct.”
Adam Smith · Moral philosophy
“Have the courage to use your own understanding! — that is the motto of enlightenment.”
Immanuel Kant · Critical philosophy