Philosophy Quotes

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

43879 quotes

A
"The mind is the bridge between the eternal and the temporal."
Anaxagoras
A
"The masses have never thirsted after truth; they turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste."
Aristophanes
A
"A man cannot escape his nature any more than he can escape his shadow."
Aristophanes
A
"The pursuit of pleasure without moral constraint leads inevitably to the destruction of both pleasure and morality."
Aristophanes
A
"The greatest folly is to believe one's own wisdom and doubt the wisdom of ages past."
Aristophanes
E
"Character is fate."
Euripides
E
"The unexamined life is not worth living."
Euripides
E
"The burden of proof lies with the one making the claim."
Euripides
E
"To understand others, one must first understand oneself."
Euripides
A
"The apeiron, the boundless, is the principle from which all things arise and to which all things return."
Anaximander
A
"All things share in the infinite, and the infinite dwells in all things."
Anaximander
A
"The infinite cannot be understood through finite means alone."
Anaximander
A
"Every substance contains within itself the contradiction of becoming and ceasing."
Anaximander
A
"In the apeiron, all contradictions find their resolution without contradiction."
Anaximander
A
"The boundaries we perceive are illusions born of limited perception."
Anaximander
A
"The infinite cannot be named, yet all things speak its truth."
Anaximander
A
"The observer and the observed are one within the boundless whole."
Anaximander
A
"To doubt all certainties is the beginning of true understanding."
Anaximander
A
"In the apeiron dwells both the mercy and the necessity of existence."
Anaximander
A
"All knowledge is but notes on a music that has no beginning and no end."
Anaximander
D
"Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion."
Democritus
D
"Do not try to establish all things by rules; many things are better left to custom."
Democritus
D
"Nothing is created from nothing, nor passes into non-existence."
Democritus
D
"If you pursue this life, you will perfect the matter."
Democritus
D
"The universe is an infinite sphere whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere."
Democritus
D
"Thinking is the talking of the soul with itself."
Democritus
D
"Wealth and poverty are not terms of truth but terms of error."
Democritus
A
"Observe the wind to understand the invisible forces that govern existence."
Anaximenes
A
"To understand air is to understand the bridge between matter and spirit."
Anaximenes
A
"The universe is not made of atoms alone, but of infinite gradations of being."
Anaximenes