Philosophy Quotes

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

43879 quotes

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"Not all philosophers are fools though most speak foolishly."
Emily Dickinson
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"The mind is the great lever of all things; human thought is the process by which human ends are ultimately answered."
Washington Irving
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"The grand lesson of true philosophy is to accommodate ourselves to the circumstances in which we are placed."
Washington Irving
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"A society is only as strong as the character of its individual members."
Washington Irving
"Principles have no real force except when one is well fed."
Mark Twain
"The lack of money is the root of all evil."
Mark Twain
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"Some certain significance lurks in all things, else all things are little worth."
Herman Melville
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"A good man is one who has never quite made up his mind about anything."
Herman Melville
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"The universe is indifferent to our suffering and our joy."
Herman Melville
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"Amidst the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, as to awaken in us a sense of the most perfect order and harmony."
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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"The most important thing any generation can do is to transmit to the next generation the values and ideals upon which a nation is founded."
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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"A sick man in his chamber differs vastly from the same man in his study."
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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"God does not play dice with the universe, but man does."
Edgar Allan Poe
"The mind is everything. What you think you become."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The ancestor of every action is a thought."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There is no chance, and no anarchy, in the universe."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The creation of the world is the creation of the self."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The greatest revolution in our generation is the discovery of the self."
Ralph Waldo Emerson
E
"Growth of man leads to growth of God."
Emily Dickinson
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"My business is circumference."
Emily Dickinson
"Emotion is the chief source of consciousness."
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
"The mind is everything."
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
"Philosophy is a way of life."
Louis-Ferdinand Céline
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"The intimate essence of the real is something we feel."
Henry James
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"What strange creatures of contradiction we are."
Henry James
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"We are not the masters of our fate."
Henry James
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"Everything human is pathetic."
Henry James
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"The privilege of the weak is to go through life unexamined."
Henry James
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"Reciprocity is not a law of nature."
Henry James
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"The human heart is an abyss."
François Mauriac