Philosophy Quotes

"Nature has placed mankind under two sovereign masters, pleasure and pain."

"The more strictly we are watched, the better we behave."

"Custom and precedent can supplant reason and common sense."

"Pain and pleasure are the sovereign masters of mankind."

"One man's meat is another man's poison."

"The influence of precedents is so powerful because people are so apt to conform."

"The good of an individual is the foundation of the good of the whole."

"The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, but the kind of man the country turns out."

"To understand the human condition, one must first understand pleasure and pain."

"Where there are no regulations, there is chaos; where there are too many, there is oppression."

"All pain is evil; to prevent pain is the object of all rational conduct."

"Necessity knows no law; but necessity itself is often the child of folly."

"Property is a fiction; but a necessary one for the organization of society."

"The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it"

"Man makes religion; religion does not make man"

"The expansion of needs is the expansion of human nature itself"

"Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love"

"Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form"

"The mode of production in material life determines the social, political and intellectual life processes in general"

"Being determines consciousness; consciousness does not determine being"

"The contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production must be resolved"

"The human mind evolves through three necessary stages: theological, metaphysical, and positive."

"Philosophy's task is explaining how knowledge develops and applying that understanding to society."

"Philosophy's role is to integrate all knowledge into a unified system beneficial to humanity."

"Persons are not born fully formed by society but rather are shaped by their environment and choices."

"The greatest well-being of all is the only measure of moral approval."

"Great minds require great subjects to work upon."

"The improvement of mankind is the ultimate goal of all philosophy."

"The task of philosophy is to translate the language of theology into the language of reason."

"Man creates God in his own image, not the reverse."