Philosophy Quotes

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

43879 quotes

J
"Spiritual matters are merely physical matters misunderstood."
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
J
"The body's needs are not shameful but fundamental."
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
J
"The most dangerous philosophy is one that denies the body."
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
J
"We cannot escape the consequences of our corporeal nature."
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
J
"The diversity of human talent reflects the diversity of bodies."
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
J
"We are ambassadors of matter to ourselves."
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
J
"The illusion of the soul complicates simple physical truths."
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
J
"Pleasure and pain are the primary realities of existence."
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
J
"The mechanical view of humanity is also its liberation."
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
J
"The soul is a phantom conjured by theological imagination."
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
J
"Authenticity requires acknowledging our material essence."
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
J
"Morality is nothing but a machine built by society."
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
J
"Our nature is neither sinful nor divine but physical."
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
J
"The human machine is admirable precisely in its mechanicality."
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
J
"The atheist understands human nature better than the believer."
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
J
"The most radical act is thinking clearly about ourselves."
Julien Offray de La Mettrie
J
"In the architecture of human experience, memory serves as both foundation and walls."
Johann Tetens
J
"Our perceptions are not windows to reality but constructions of the mind."
Johann Tetens
J
"The philosophical life is one of continual questioning, never final answering."
Johann Tetens
J
"Identity is not fixed but continually reconstructed through our choices and relationships."
Johann Tetens
J
"Our understanding of the world is always mediated by our nature as thinking beings."
Johann Tetens
J
"Philosophy begins in wonder and returns perpetually to wonder."
Johann Tetens
G
"Barbarism is the natural state from which all nations have arisen."
Giovanni Vico
G
"Language itself is the archive of all human knowledge."
Giovanni Vico
G
"The sensory world is only half the truth of existence."
Giovanni Vico
G
"To know God is to know oneself; to know oneself is to know all things."
Giovanni Vico
G
"The divine comedy is reflected in every human life and every human choice."
Giovanni Vico
G
"Language reveals the assumptions of a culture about reality and truth."
Giovanni Vico
G
"History is philosophy teaching by examples."
Giovanni Vico
J
"A man sees in the world what he carries in his heart."
Johann Goethe