Quotations from Philosophers of different ages

Quotations

Source

We make war that we may live in peace.

Nicomachean Ethics bk. 10

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

Poetics Ch. 42, 1460a 267

Man is by nature a political animal.

Politics bk. 1, 1253 a 23

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

Politics bk. 1, 1253 a 279

A flatterer is a friend who is your inferior, or pretends to be so.

A friend is a second self.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature,  compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire .

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.

Quotations

Source

A crowd is not company, and faces are but a gallery of pictures, and talk but tinkling cymbal, where there is no love.

Essays (1625) Of Friendship

Wives are Young men’s mistresses, companions for middle age, and old men’s nurses .

Essays(1625) Of Marriage and the Single Life

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

Essays(1625) Of Studies

Reading maketh a full man, conference a ready man, and writing an exact man.

Essays(1625) Of Studies

Histories make men wise, poets, witty, the mathematics, subtile, natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic, rhetoric, able to contend.

Essays(1625) Of Studies

A mixture of lie doth ever add pleasure .

Essays(1625) Of Truth

Opportunity makes a thief.

A letter of advice to the Earl of Essex

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds .

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.

Praise From the common people is generally false, and rather follows the vain than the virtuous.

Knowledge is power.

Quotations

Source

Man has born free and everywhere he is in chains.

Du Contract Social(1762) ch.1

Quotations

Source

I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.

In Diogenes Laertius lives of the Philosophers bk. 2 sect. 3

The unexamined life is not worth living.

In Plato Apology 38a

It is never right to do wrong or to requite wrong with wrong, or when we suffer evil to defend ourselves by doing evil in return.

In Plato Crito 49a

It is perfectly certain that the soul is immortal and imperishable, and our soul will actually exist in another world

In Plato Phaedo 107a

By all means marry; if you get a good wife, you’ll be happy. If you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher

In Plato Phaedo 107a

Do not do to others what angers you if done to you by others

In Plato Phaedo 107a

Envy is the ulcer of the soul

In Plato Phaedo 107a

IF a man is proud of his wealth, he should not be praised until it is known how he employs it. The only good is knowledge and only evil is ignorance.

In Plato Phaedo 107a

Thou should eat to live; not live to eat

In Plato Phaedo 107a

Having the fewest wants, I am nearest to the gods

‘From Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers.”

I am not Athenian or a Greek., but a citizen of the world

From Plutarch of Banishment.

Quotations

Source

Know thyself

Plato in Protagoras, Inscribed on the temple on Apollo in Delphi

If women are expected to do the same work as men, we must teach them the same things.

Ignorance e, the root and the stem of every evil.

Laws are partly formed for the sake of good men, in order to instruct them how they may live on friendly terms with one another, and partly for the sake of those who refuse to be instructed, whose spirit cannot be subdued, or softened, or hindered from plunging into evil.

Never discourage anyone …who continually makes progress, no matter how slow.

Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself.

We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.

Dialoguses, phaedo

Wise men talk, because they have  something to say;

Fools, because they have to say something.

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation

False words are not only evil in themselves,

But they infect the soul with evil

Mankind censure injustice fearing that they may be the victims of it, and not because they shrink from committing it.

The Republic

Before God we are all equally wise and equally foolish.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence and poverty of meanness and viciousness and both of discontent.

Quotations

Source

A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one.

Great men’s errors are to be venerated as more fruitful than little men’s truths.

Insanity in individuals is something rare-but in groups, parties, nations, epochs, it is the rule.

Man is the cruelest animal.

Many people wait throughout their whole lives for the chance to be good in their own fashion.

No price is too high to play for the privilege of owning yourself.

Talking much about oneself can also be a means of conceal oneself.

The advantage of a bad memory is that one enjoys several times the same good things for the first time.

To forget one’s purpose is the commonest form of stupidity.