Philosophy Quotes

Questions about meaning, existence, and truth from thinkers who spent their lives searching for answers.

43879 quotes

F
"Human nature is always the same in every age."
Fyodor Dostoevsky
F
"The true paradise is the paradise that we have lost."
Fyodor Dostoevsky
F
"Madness is often the only way to preserve sanity."
Fyodor Dostoevsky
F
"Every person carries a world within themselves."
Fyodor Dostoevsky
L
"The struggle which we call existence is a struggle of beliefs."
Leo Tolstoy
L
"The main source of suffering is desire and attachment."
Leo Tolstoy
L
"Consciousness is the only door to being, to existing, to becoming."
Leo Tolstoy
L
"I simply cannot stop myself from thinking about the meaning of my existence."
Leo Tolstoy
L
"The more we live by our intellect, the less we understand the meaning of life."
Leo Tolstoy
L
"The principle of true morality lies in not transgressing the bounds of reason and natural law."
Leo Tolstoy
L
"A man who becomes conscious of the absurdity of human condition is finally freed from it."
Leo Tolstoy
L
"The greatest evil is materialism masquerading as reason."
Leo Tolstoy
A
"Love, friendship, respect do not unite people as much as a common hatred for something."
Anton Chekhov
A
"There is something in human nature which prevents us from being satisfied."
Anton Chekhov
A
"In life one must sometimes make a decision between two evils."
Anton Chekhov
A
"I want to understand the human being in all their manifestations."
Anton Chekhov
A
"The thief thinks everyone is a thief."
Anton Chekhov
A
"I believe that everything that happens in life is incidental."
Anton Chekhov
A
"Man is what he believes."
Anton Chekhov
A
"The feeling of the human soul is more mysterious than the universe."
Anton Chekhov
A
"Nothing is a miracle, everything in life is relative to everything else."
Anton Chekhov
A
"To different minds, the same world is a hell and a paradise."
Anton Chekhov
A
"Mysticism is the child of meditation."
Anton Chekhov
I
"In our time, every thinking man feels before everything else the yawning abyss of skepticism."
Ivan Turgenev
I
"To live without philosophy is, in fact, to live blindly."
Ivan Turgenev
W
"How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
William Butler Yeats
W
"Sailing to Byzantium is not just a journey, it is a spiritual quest."
William Butler Yeats
W
"Why should not old men be mad?"
William Butler Yeats
W
"The second coming brings rough beasts slouching."
William Butler Yeats
W
"The mask outlasts the man."
William Butler Yeats