Library, page 8

“War is sweet to those who have not experienced it.”

Erasmus · Christian humanism

“Either God is or he is not. You must wager.”

Blaise Pascal · Early modern philosophy

“That is well said, but we must cultivate our garden.”

Voltaire · Enlightenment

“Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau · Enlightenment

“Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing other than that he will be forced to be free.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau · Enlightenment

“There are four classes of Idols which beset men's minds.”

Francis Bacon · Empiricism

“Good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.”

Thomas Aquinas · Scholasticism

“Grace does not destroy nature, but perfects it, so that natural reason should minister to faith as the natural bent of the will ministers to charity.”

Thomas Aquinas · Scholasticism

“For they are quite beside the mark that place the happiness of men in things themselves, since it only depends upon opinion.”

Erasmus · Christian humanism

“A prince who wants to maintain himself must learn how not to be good, and use that knowledge, or not use it, according to necessity.”

Niccolò Machiavelli · Political realism

“The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.”

Blaise Pascal · Early modern philosophy

“The care of souls is not committed to the civil magistrate, any more than to other men.”

John Locke · Empiricism

“If God exists, whence comes evil? Yet whence comes good, if He exists not?”

Boethius · Late Roman philosophy

“Justice is a habit whereby a man renders to each one his due by a constant and perpetual will.”

Thomas Aquinas · Scholasticism

“Hence it is that all armed prophets have conquered, and the unarmed ones have been destroyed.”

Niccolò Machiavelli · Political realism

“Man is neither angel nor brute, and the unfortunate thing is that he who would act the angel acts the brute.”

Blaise Pascal · Early modern philosophy

“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”

Voltaire · Enlightenment

“The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau · Enlightenment

“The subject and the object, which have for their spheres the notions of 'I' and 'thou', are opposed to each other as darkness and light, and cannot be identified.”

Ādi Śaṅkara · Advaita Vedānta

“Superimposition is the apparent presentation, in the form of remembrance, to consciousness of something previously observed, in some other thing.”

Ādi Śaṅkara · Advaita Vedānta

“Medicine is the science by which we learn the various states of the human body, in health and when not in health, and the means by which health is likely to be lost and, when lost, is likely to be restored.”

Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) · Islamic Aristotelianism

“The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.”

Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) · Islamic Aristotelianism

“The necessary existent is that which, when it is assumed not to exist, an absurdity results. The possible existent is that which, when it is assumed either to exist or not to exist, no absurdity results.”

Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) · Islamic Aristotelianism

“We say: the soul is the first perfection of a natural body possessed of organs, which has life potentially.”

Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) · Islamic Aristotelianism

“The connection between what is habitually believed to be a cause and what is habitually believed to be an effect is not necessary, according to us.”

Al-Ghazālī · Islamic philosophy

“With any two things that are not identical and do not imply one another, it is not necessary that the existence or the nonexistence of one follow from the existence or the nonexistence of the other.”

Al-Ghazālī · Islamic philosophy

“Knowledge of the self is the key to knowledge of God.”

Al-Ghazālī · Islamic philosophy

“…when I was forty-two years and seven months old, Heaven was opened and a fiery light of exceeding brilliance came and permeated my whole brain…”

Hildegard of Bingen · Christian mysticism

“I am the supreme and fiery force who kindles every spark of life.”

Hildegard of Bingen · Christian mysticism

“If the activity of philosophy is nothing more than study of existing beings and reflection on them as indications of the Artisan, and if the Law has recommended and urged reflection on beings, then what this name signifies is either obligatory or recommended by the Law.”

Ibn Rushd (Averroes) · Aristotelianism

“For the natures of men are on different levels with respect to [their paths to] assent…”

Ibn Rushd (Averroes) · Aristotelianism

“It is futile to do with more what can be done with fewer.”

William of Ockham · Nominalism

“A universal is an intention of the soul, capable of being predicated of many.”

William of Ockham · Nominalism

“No universal is a substance existing outside the mind.”

William of Ockham · Nominalism

“The owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the falling of dusk.”

G. W. F. Hegel · German idealism

“What is rational is actual, and what is actual is rational.”

G. W. F. Hegel · German idealism

“A person can do what they will, but they cannot will what they will.”

Arthur Schopenhauer · Philosophical pessimism

“Compassion is the basis of morality.”

Arthur Schopenhauer · Philosophical pessimism

“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Existentialism (forerunner)

“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”

Søren Kierkegaard · Existentialism (forerunner)

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.”

Karl Marx · Historical materialism

“Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

Karl Marx · Historical materialism

“Out of life's school of war: what does not destroy me makes me stronger.”

Friedrich Nietzsche · Genealogy and perspectivism

“If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how.”

Friedrich Nietzsche · Genealogy and perspectivism

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.”

Friedrich Nietzsche · Genealogy and perspectivism

“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.”

Friedrich Nietzsche · Genealogy and perspectivism

“Never to ask for the meaning of a word in isolation, but only in the context of a proposition.”

Gottlob Frege · Analytic philosophy / Logicism

“We must go back to the 'things themselves'.”

Edmund Husserl · Phenomenology

“To experience means to know facts just as they are, to know in accordance with facts by completely relinquishing one's own fabrications.”

Nishida Kitarō · Kyoto School

“The world is all that is the case.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein · Analytic philosophy