c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
From whichever side I start, I think I am in an old place where others have been before me.
— Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun
This is the Modern Man. The man who seeks himself without ever seeking, because he does not want to find;The man who does not hesitate to criticize the other, although he behaves in the same way;
— Cristiane Serruya, The Modern Man: A philosophical divagation about the evil banality of daily acts
The stalker, meanwhile, stepped into the road. Didn’t even check for traffic. There wasn’t any, but something told me this was lucky for traffic rather than the stalker.
— Graham Parke, No Hope for Gomez!
Windmill or no windmill, he said, life would go on as it had always gone on--that is, badly.
— George Orwell, Animal Farm
Our culture has filled our heads but emptied our hearts, stuffed our wallets but starved our wonder. It has fed our thirst for facts but not for meaning or mystery. It produces "nice" people, not heroes.
— Peter Kreeft, Jesus-Shock
To recognize untruth as a condition of life--that certainly means resisting accustomed value feelings in a dangerous way
—  and a philosophy that risks this would by that token alone place itself beyond good and evil.
In the end, it is our defiance that redeems us. If wolves had a religion – if there was a religion of the wolf – that it is what it would tell us.
— Mark Rowlands, The Philosopher and the Wolf: Lessons from the Wild on Love, Death, and Happiness
To stay or to go, it amounted to the same thing.
— Albert Camus, The Stranger
Whatever I learned,Whatever I knew,Seems like those faded years of childhood that flew,Away in some dilemma,Always in some confusion,The purpose of this life,Seems like an illusion!
— Mehek Bassi, Chained: Can you escape fate?
Treat everyone you meet as if they were you.
— Doug Dillon
With the truth, all given facts harmonize; but with what is false, the truth soon hits a wrong note.
— Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics
The toxic behaviors were there before you decided to enter into relationships with them. The signs were there. You may have chosen to look the other way, but the signs were there.—Psychotherapist from Type 1 Sociopath
— P.A. Speers, Type 1 Sociopath - When Difficult People Are More Than Just Difficult People
The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.
— Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy
The truth is helpless when up against perception
— Zack W. Van
All statistics have outliers.
— Nenia Campbell, Terrorscape
The universe never complains.When you're wrong or right,She always loves and cares,She always gives and shares. When you get lost she becomes the light,Helps you to find what is right. But she never forgetsTo show you the light.
— Debasish Mridha
Why do we think love is a magician? Because the whole power of magic consists in love. The work of magic is the attraction of one thing by another because of a certain affinity of nature.
— Marsilio Ficino
When the heart is dry the eye is dry.
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables - anthology
Resources are hired to give results, not reasons.
— Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words
Ain't no sense worryin' about the things you got control over, 'cause if you got control over 'em, ain't no sense worryin'. And ain't no sense worryin' about the things you don't got control over, 'cause if you don't got control over 'em, ain't no sense worryin'.
— Mickey Rivers
There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal as a human being to human beings; remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
— Bertrand Russell
The statement ‘There is nothing more American than an Indian’ happens to be a multidimensional paradox. Try and not say too many of those. That might open your mind to ideas that could cause sanity point loss.
— Charles Slagle
The logical man must either deny all miracles or none.
— Charles Alexander Eastman, The Soul of the Indian
The wise man who has become accustomed to necessities knows better how to share with others than how to take from them, so great a treasure of self-sufficiency has he found.
— Epicurus, Epicurus: Letters, Principal Doctrines, and Vatican Sayings
There's no greater show on earth than observing human nature
— Benny Bellamacina, Little Luigi: A Musical Adventure
They grew
—  they did not talk about growing.
The ruling classes use broken and smashed up childhoods as weaponised instruments of domination around the world. This is why the government has no incentive to end child abuse
—  because the government needs abuse victims as enforcers.
Guilt is a feeling that you owe a debt that you're not paying.
— Stefan Molyneux
What is food to one man is bitter poison to others
— Titus Lucretius Carus
Irrational expectations are at the root of most human suffering.
— Stefan Molyneux
There's a huge swath of humanity that has developed verbal abilities to extract resources from guilt-ridden people.They used to be priests, and now they're leftists.
— Stefan Molyneux
The supply of matter in the universe was never more tightly packed than it is now, or more widely spread out. For nothing is ever added to it or subtracted from it. It follows that the movement of atoms today is no different from what it was in bygone ages and always will be. So the things that have regularly come into being will continue to come into being in the same manner; they will be and grow and flourish so far as each is allowed by the laws of nature.
— Titus Lucretius Carus, On the Nature of Things
What comes, is called.
— Ki Longfellow, Flow Down Like Silver: Hypatia of Alexandria
But only he who, himself enlightened, is not afraid of shadows.
— Immanuel Kant, An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?
Love taught me to die with dignity that I might come forth anew in splendor. Born once of flesh, then again of fire, I was reborn a third time to the sound of my name humming haikus in heaven’s mouth.
— Aberjhani, The River of Winged Dreams
The debate was wearing me out. Once you've posed that question, it won't go away. I think many people kill themselves simply to stop the debate about whether they will or they won't. Anything I thought or did was immediately drawn into the debate. Made a stupid remark—why not kill myself? Missed the bus—better put an end to it all. Even the good got in there. I liked that movie—maybe I shouldn’t kill myself.
— Susanna Kaysen
Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.
— Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
Men are made for happiness, and he who is completely happy has the right to say to himself, 'I am doing God's will on earth.
— Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
What is existence for but to be laughed at if men in their twenties have already attained the utmost?
— Søren Kierkegaard, Either/Or: A Fragment of Life
There are no bad words. Bad thoughts. Bad intentions, and wooooords.
— George Carlin
Women's liberation is one thing, but the permeation of anti-male sentiment in post-modern popular culture - from our mocking sitcom plots to degrading commercial story lines - stands testament to the ignorance of society. Fair or not, as the lead gender that never requested such a role, the historical male reputation is quite balanced. For all of their perceived wrongs, over centuries they've moved entire civilizations forward, nurtured the human quest for discovery and industry, and led humankind from inconvenient darkness to convenient modernity. Navigating the chessboard that is human existence is quite a feat, yet one rarely acknowledged in modern academia or media. And yet for those monumental achievements, I love and admire the balanced creation that is man for all his strengths and weaknesses, his gifts and his curses. I would venture to say that most wise women do.
— Tiffany Madison
Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable
—  what it is or what it means can never be said.
There is no man, and no place, without war. The only thing we can do is choose a side, and fight. That is the only choice we get - who we fight for, who we fight against. That is life.
— Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram
I think it was the institution...I was trying to master it.
— E. Lockhart, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
The universe danced towards life. Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite tendency towards awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time.
— Terry Pratchett, Soul Music
We are citizens of the world. The tragedy of our times is that we do not know this.
— Woodrow Wilson
All resistance is a rupture with what is. And every rupture begins, for those engaged in it, through a rupture with oneself.
— Alain Badiou, Metapolitics
Omnia vincit amor" - "Love conquers all
— Virgil
Atheism is a way of humility. It's to think oneself to be an animal, as we are actually and to allow oneself to become human.
— André Comte-Sponville, Presentations de La Philosophie
Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there were many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. This commonsense philosophy had consoled me many times before, and it did now, too.
— Anne Fortier, Juliet
Everything, no matter how beautiful, is only with us for awhile.
— Geoff Ryman
One word can change your life forever.I love youI hate youThink about it
— Alan Macmillan Orr, The Natural Mind - Waking Up: Volume I
Cheapen words and they'll cheapen you
— Benny Bellamacina
Forbearance in the face of fate, beauty constant under torture, are not merely passive. They are a positive achievement, an explicit triumph.
— Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Tales
Unfortunately for the good sense of mankind, the fact of their fallibility is far from carrying the weight in their practical judgement, which is always allowed to it in theory; for while every one well knows himself to be fallible, few think it necessary to take any precautions against their own fallibility. 
— John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.
— Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Love life, Live Love
— Benny Bellamacina
Education is meaningless without manners
— Benny Bellamacina, Piddly Poems for Children, v.2
So, when on one side you hoist in Locke's head, you go over that way; but now, on the other side, hoist in Kant's and you come back again; but in very poor plight. Thus, some minds for ever keep trimming boat. Oh, ye foolish! throw all these thunder-heads overboard, and then you will float light and right.
— Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or, The Whale
Someone once told me that the finer points of devotion are about the size of a pinhole, and there are millions of them. And if you could connect each dot, then you’ve got a diagram of what you think you thought you knew, and if you’re willing to admit that you know nothing…you have the blueprint for a breakthrough.
— Shane L. Koyczan
Ideas are the source of all things
— Plato
I like Dancing of Indian girls more than my parents’ prayers . Because they dance with love and passion . But my parents just say their prayers because they got used to it .
— Ali Shariati
Sometimes with the most intense pain a paralysis of sensibility occurs. The soul disintegrates--hence the deadly frost--the free power of the mind--the shattering, ceaseless wit of this kind of despair. There is no inclination for anything any more--the person is alone, like a baleful power--as he has no connection with the rest of the world he consumes himself gradually--and in accordance with his own principle he is--misanthropic and misotheos.
— Novalis, Novalis: Philosophical Writings
The more invested I am in my own ideas about reality, the more those experiences will feel like victimizations rather than the ups and downs of relating. Actually, I believe that the less I conceptualize things that way, the more likely it is that people will want to stay by me, because they will not feel burdened, consciously or unconsciously, by my projections, judgments, entitlements, or unrealistic expectations.
— David Richo, Daring to Trust: Opening Ourselves to Real Love and Intimacy
We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent — people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.
— Erich Fromm, To Have or to Be? The Nature of the Psyche
Our actions are guaranteed to affect others. Because we are not alone in this world, much of our learning about ourselves comes from our interaction with others. Our relationships are our teachers. We learn from each other.
— Tae Yun Kim, Seven Steps to Inner Power
Our knowledge of circumstances has increased, but our uncertainty, instead of having diminished, has only increased. The reason of this is, that we do not gain all our experience at once, but by degrees; so our determinations continue to be assailed incessantly by fresh experience; and the mind, if we may use the expression, must always be under arms.
— Carl von Clausewitz
Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty.
— Henry David Thoreau
Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry.
— Charles Sanders Peirce
The human body resonates at the same frequency as Mother Earth. So instead of only focusing on trying to save the earth, which operates in congruence to our vibrations, I think it is more important to be one with each other. If you really want to remedy the earth, we have to mend mankind. And to unite mankind, we heal the Earth. That is the only way. Mother Earth will exist with or without us. Yet if she is sick, it is because mankind is sick and separated. And if our vibrations are bad, she reacts to it, as do all living creatures.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
What does it matter where my body happens to be?' he said. 'My mind goes on working all the same.
— Lewis Carroll
Histories make men wise; poets, witty; the mathematics, subtle; natural philosophy, deep; moral, grave; logic and rhetoric, able to contend.
— Francis Bacon, The Collected Works of Sir Francis Bacon
THE MAXIMS OF MEDICINE Before you examine the body of a patient,Be patient to learn his story.For once you learn his story,You will also come to knowHis body.Before you diagnose any sickness,Make sure there is no sickness in the mind or heart.For the emotions in a man’s moon or sun,Can point to the sickness inAny one of his other parts.Before you treat a man with a condition,Know that not all cures can heal all people.For the chemistry that works on one patient,May not work for the next,Because even medicine has its ownConditions.Before asserting a prognosis on any patient,Always be objective and never subjective.For telling a man that he will win the treasure of life,But then later discovering that he will lose,Will harm him more than by telling himThat he may lose,But then he wins.THE MAXIMS OF MEDICINE by Suzy Kassem
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
Without knowledge of what I am and why I am here, it is impossible to live, and since I cannot know that, I cannot live either. In an infinity of time, in an infinity of matter, and an infinity of space a bubble-organism emerges while will exist for a little time and then burst, and that bubble am I.
— Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
War means fighting. The business of the soldier is to fight. Armies are not called out to dig trenches, to throw up breastworks, to live in camps, but to find the enemy and strike him; to invade his country, and do him all possible damage in the shortest possible time. This will involve great destruction of life and property while it lasts; but such a war will of necessity be of brief continuance, and so would be an economy of life and property in the end.
— Stonewall Jackson
There is no part of one’s beliefs about oneself which cannot be modified by sufficiently powerful psychological techniques. There is nothing about oneself which cannot be taken away or changed. The proper stimuli can, if correctly applied, turn communists into fascists, saints into devils, the meek into heroes, and vice-versa. There is no sovereign sanctuary within ourseles which represents our real nature. There is nobody at home in the internal fortress. Everything we cherish as our ego, everything we believe in, is just what we have cobbled together out of the accident of our birth and subsequent experiences. With drugs, brainwashing, and other techniques of extreme persuasion, we can quite readily make a man a devotee of a different ideology, the patriot of a different country, or the follower of a different religion.
— Peter J. Carroll
Prayer is based on the remote possibility that someone is actually listening; but so is a lot of conversation. If the former seems far-fetched, consider the latter: even if someone is listening to your story, and really hearing, that person will disappear from existence in the blink of a cosmic eye, so why bother to tell this perhaps illusory and possibly un-listening person something he or she is unlikely to truly understand, just before the two of you blip back out of existence? We like to talk to people who answer us, intelligently if possible, but we do talk without needing response or expecting comprehension. Sometimes, the event is the word, the act of speaking. Once we pull that apart a bit, the action of talking becomes more important than the question of whether the talking is working-because we know, going in, that the talking is not working. That said, one might as well pray.
— Jennifer Michael Hecht, Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson
First impressions are rarely worth preserving. Men typically fall short of our expectations.
— Renate Linnenkoper, Exogenesis
The goal of education is to enable individuals to continue their education.
— John Dewey
A friend is a friend who continues to love you and like you when you don't love him or like him any more.
— Debasish Mridha
why are we here?where do we come from?traditionally,these are questionsfor philosophy,but philosophy is dead
— Stephen Hawking
If everyone wants to be somebody, I want to be somebody else
— Benny Bellamacina
Truth has nothing to do with the conclusion, and everything to do with the methodology.
— Stefan Molyneux
Baseless victimhood is usually the last stage before outright aggression.
— Stefan Molyneux
Sanity is not about confrontation. It's about filtering. Having a stable and happy life is about saying "no" to crazy people, not about inviting them in and then hoping that confrontations are going to make them sane.
— Stefan Molyneux
To be yourself is in many ways to be inconvenient to others. Only placaters and appeasers get along with other people all the time and that's not really getting along with anyone. That's just self erasure.
— Stefan Molyneux
We may not yet know the right way to go, but we should at least stop going in the wrong direction.
— Stefan Molyneux, Against The Gods?
A smiling lie is a whirlwind, easy to enter, but hard to escape.
— Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun
The three most important words in a relationship are not, 'I love you,' but, 'Tell me more.
— Stefan Molyneux
as soon as we renounce fiction and illusion, we lose reality itself; the moment we subtract fictions from reality, reality itself loses its discursive-logical consistency.
— Slavoj Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology
...when he looks at Beauty in the only way that Beauty can be seen - only then will it become possible for him to give birth not to images of virtue (because he's in touch with no images), but to true virtue [arete] (because he is in touch with true Beauty). The love of the gods belongs to anyone who has given to true virtue and nourished it, and if any human being could become immortal, it would be he.
— Plato, The Symposium
He examined the chess problem and set out the pieces. It was a tricky ending, involving a couple of knights.'White to play and mate in two moves.'Winston looked up at the portrait of Big Brother. White always mates, he thought with a sort of cloudy mysticism. Always, without exception, it is so arranged. In no chess problem since the beginning of the world has black ever won. Did it not symbolize the eternal, unvarying triumph of Good over Evil? The huge face gazed back at him, full of calm power. White always mates.
— George Orwell, 1984
Wherever there is a human being, there is an opportunity for crisis.
— Seneca
Saepe creat molles aspera spina rosas" - "Often the prickly thorn produces tender roses
— Ovid
love make us poets, and the approach of death should make us philosophers.
— George Santayana
The complexities of adult life get in the way of the truth. The great philosophers have always been able to clear away the complexities and see simple distinctions - simple once they are stated, vastly difficult before. If we are to follow them we too must be childishly simple in our questions - and maturely wise in our replies.
— Mortimer J. Adler, How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
There is no such thing as educational value in the abstract. The notion that some subjects and methods and that acquaintance with certain facts and truths possess educational value in and of themselves is the reason why traditional education reduced the material of education so largely to a diet of predigested materials.
— John Dewey, Experience and Education
I am in this same river. I can't much help it. I admit it: I'm racist. The other night I saw a group (or maybe a pack?) or white teenagers standing in a vacant lot, clustered around a 4x4, and I crossed the street to avoid them; had they been black, I probably would have taken another street entirely. And I'm misogynistic. I admit that, too. I'm a shitty cook, and a worse house cleaner, probably in great measure because I've internalized the notion that these are woman's work. Of course, I never admit that's why I don't do them: I always say I just don't much enjoy those activities (which is true enough; and it's true enough also that many women don't enjoy them either), and in any case, I've got better things to do, like write books and teach classes where I feel morally superior to pimps. And naturally I value money over life. Why else would I own a computer with a hard drive put together in Thailand by women dying of job-induced cancer? Why else would I own shirts mad in a sweatshop in Bangladesh, and shoes put together in Mexico? The truth is that, although many of my best friends are people of color (as the cliche goes), and other of my best friends are women, I am part of this river: I benefit from the exploitation of others, and I do not much want to sacrifice this privilege. I am, after all, civilized, and have gained a taste for "comforts and elegancies" which can be gained only through the coercion of slavery. The truth is that like most others who benefit from this deep and broad river, I would probably rather die (and maybe even kill, or better, have someone kill for me) than trade places with the men, women, and children who made my computer, my shirt, my shoes.
— Derrick Jensen, The Culture of Make Believe
A farm includes the passion of the farmer's heart, the interest of the farm's customers, the biological activity in the soil, the pleasantness of the air about the farm -- it's everything touching, emanating from, and supplying that piece of landscape. A farm is virtually a living organism. The tragedy of our time is that cultural philosophies and market realities are squeezing life's vitality out of most farms. And that is why the average farmer is now 60 years old. Serfdom just doesn't attract the best and brightest.
— Joel Salatin, Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front
the Real-World was a sprawling mess of a book in need of a good editor.
— Jasper Fforde, One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
Sure, I could tell you I am no longer a lesbian or that I am no longer attracted to women and am straight, or I could even tell you the moon is made of cheese. I could tell you many things, but the moon will still not be made of cheese, and I will still not be attracted to men.
— Cristina Marrero
İnsanoğlu nedense anlayamadığı şeylere kötülemeye meyilli.
— Elif Shafak
Problems in science are sometimes made easier by adding complications.
— Daniel C. Dennett, Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
Nu pot fi eu insumi decat daca ma inalt pana la furie sau cobor pana la descurajare: la nivelul meu obisnuit, ignor faptul ca exist.
— Emil M. Cioran
On a grander scale, when a society segregates itself, the consequences affect the economy, the emotions, and the ecology. That's one reason why it's easy for pro-lifers to eat factory-raised animals that disrespect everything sacred about creation. And that is why it's easy for rabid environmentalists to hate chainsaws even though they snuggle into a mattress supported by a black walnut bedstead.
— Joel Salatin, Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front
His own life suddenly seemed repellently formal. Whom did he know or what did he know and whom did he love? Sitting on the stump under the burden of his father's death and even the mortality inherent in the dying, wildly colored canopy of leaves, he somehow understood that life was only what one did every day.... Nothing was like anything else, including himself, and everything was changing all of the time. He knew he couldn't perceive the change because he was changing too, along with everything else.
— Jim Harrison, Legends of the Fall
It does not follow, because our ancestors made so many errors of fact and mixed them with their religion, that we should therefore leave off being religious at all. By being religious we establish ourselves in possession of ultimate reality at the only points at which reality is given us to guard. Our responsible concern is with our private destiny, after all.
— William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience
It's the truth, even if it didn't happen......if they don't exist, how can a man see them?
— Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
On one hand the eternal attraction of man towards femininity (cf. Gn. 2:23) frees in him-or perhaps it should free-a gamut of spiritual-corporal desires of an especially personal and "sharing" nature (cf. analysis of the "beginning"), to which a proportionate pyramid of values corresponds. On the other hand, "lust" limits this gamut, obscuring the pyramid of values that marks the perennial attraction of male and female.
— John Paul II, Purity of Heart: Reflections on Love and Lust / Pope John Paul II's Theology of the Body in Simple Language, Vol. 2
You know," Daddy said, "it's some that can live their whole life out without asking about it and it's others has to know why it is, and this boy is one of the latters. He's going to be into everything!
— Flannery O'Connor
Laughter is the hand of God on the shoulder of a troubled world.
— Grady Nutt
A few dud universes can really clutter up your basement.
— Neal Stephenson, In the Beginning...Was the Command Line
Smartass Disciple: Master, do you really believe in the second chance?Master of Stupidity: That supports the basis of lost-then-found concept.
— Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity
la vida sólo puede ser entendida mirando hacia atrás
—  aunque deba ser vivida mirando hacia adelante
Most of the propositions and questions to be found in philosophical works are not false but nonsensical.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
When you use your energy and resources to punish people, you run out of energy and resources to protect people.
— Kelly Bryson, Don't Be Nice, Be Real: Balancing Passion for Self with Compassion for Others
I try--without success--to stop finding reasons for vanity in anything. When I happen to manage it nonetheless, I feel that I no longer belong to the mortal gang. I am above everything then, above the gods themselves. Perhaps that is what death is: a sensation of great, of extreme superiority. 
— Emil M. Cioran
As a man, casting off worn out garments taketh new ones, so the dweller in the body, entereth into ones that are new.
— Epictetus
If you spend time with crazy and dangerous people, remember – their personalities are socially transmitted diseases; like water poured into a container, most of us eventually turn into – or remain – whoever we surround ourselves with. We can choose our tribe, but we cannot change that our tribe is our destiny.﻿
— Stefan Molyneux
Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art
—  it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.
From 'the lesson of the moth':and before i could argue himout of his philosophyhe went and immolated himselfon a patent cigar lighteri do not agree with himmyself i would rather havehalf the happiness and twicethe longevitybut at the same time i wishthere was something i wantedas badly as he wanted to fry himself
— Don Marquis, Archy and Mehitabel
Deep connection is the antidote to madness.
— Stefan Molyneux
Tourism, human circulation considered as consumption is fundamentally nothing more than the leisure of going to see what has become banal.
— Guy Debord
He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason
— Baruch Spinoza
The greatest mystery the universe offers is not life but Size.
— Stephen King, The Gunslinger
Using your talent, hobby or profession in a way that makes you contribute with something good to this world is truly the way to go.
— Simon Zingerman, We All Need Heroes: Stories of the Brave and Foolish
I'm more than ever of the opinion that a decent human existence is possible today only on the fringes of society, where one then runs the risk of starving or being stoned to death. In these circumstances, a sense of humor is a great help.
— Hannah Arendt, Correspondence, 1926-1969
If you want to make progress, put up with being perceived as ignorant or naive in worldly matters, don't aspire to a reputation for sagacity. If you do impress others as somebody, don't altogether believe it. You have to realize, it isn't easy to keep your will in agreement with nature, as well as externals. Caring about the one inevitably means you are going to shortchange the other.
— Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness
Fundamentally, therefore, any man can, even under such circumstances, decide what shall become of him-mentally and spiritually. He may retain his human dignity even in a concentration camp. Dostoevski said once, "There is only one thing that I dread: not to be worthy of my sufferings."These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement. It is this spiritual freedom- which cannot be taken away- that makes life meaningful and purposeful.
— Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
As long as one believes in philosophy, one is healthy; sickness begins when one starts to think.
— Emil M. Cioran, Tears and Saints
The priest therefore saw what the anchorite could not. That God needs no witness. Neither to himself nor against. The truth is rather that if there were no God then there could be no witness for there could be no identity to the world but only each man's opinion of it. The priest saw that there is no man who is elect because there is no man who is not. To God every man is a heretic.
— Cormac McCarthy
I have no desire for others to take it on themselves to analyze my thoughts. I am without thoughts. I have never, not even once, acted on the basis of any doctrine or philosophy.I am convinced that those people whom the world considers good and respects are all liars and fakes. I do not trust the world.
— Osamu Dazai, The Setting Sun
Don't write to sell, write to tell.
— Jonas Eriksson
Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.
— John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
Remember to act always as if you were at a symposium. When the food or drink comes around, reach out and take some politely; if it passes you by don't try pulling it back. And if it has not reached you yet, don't let your desire run ahead of you, be patient until your turn comes. Adopt a similar attitude with regard to children, wife, wealth and status, and in time, you will be entitled to dine with the gods. Go further and decline these goods even when they are on offer and you will have a share in the gods' power as well as their company. That is how Diogenes, Heraclitus and philosophers like them came to be called, and considered, divine.
— Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness
The same word we love and hate, leaves in different directions, taking different paths.
— Dejan Stojanovic, The Sun Watches the Sun
The view that man was ever to be drawn by some vision of the unattainable shining ahead, doomed ever to aspire, but not to achieve, my life and my values could not bring me to that.
— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged
И всегда будут короли, более или менее жестокие, бароны, более или менее дикие, и всегда будет невежественный народ, питающий восхищение к своим угнетателям и ненависть к своему освободителю. И все потому, что раб гораздо лучше понимает своего господина, пусть даже самого жестокого, чем своего освободителя, ибо каждый раб отлично представляет себя на месте господина, но мало кто представляет себя на месте бескорыстного освободителя.
— Arkady Strugatsky, Hard to Be a God
Realizing the seriously ruthless, venomous habits and agendas of evil always instills a more fierce passion and longing for a closer God. Men, out of pride, may claim their own authorities over what constitutes good and evil; they may self-proclaim a keen knowledge of subjective morality through religion or science. But that is only if they are acknowledging the work of evil as a cartoon-like, petty little rain cloud in the sky that merely wants to dampen one's spirits. On the contrary, a man could be without a doubt lit with the strength, the peace, and the knowledge of the gods, his gods, but when or if the devils grow weary in unsuccessful attempts to torment him, they begin tormenting his loved ones, or, if not his loved ones, anyone who may attempt to grasp his philosophies. No matter how godly he may become, God is, in the end, his only hope and his only grace for the pressures built around him - it is left up to a higher authority and a more solid peace and a wider love to eclipse not just one's own evils but all evils for goodness to ultimately matter. If all men were gods, each being would dwell in a separate prison cell, hopeless, before finally imploding into nothingness.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Not bad, not bad at all," Diotallevi said. "To arrive at the truth through the painstaking reconstruction of a false text.
— Umberto Eco, Foucault's Pendulum
The first and most important field of philosophy is the application of principles such as “Do not lie.” Next come the proofs, such as why we should not lie. The third field supports and articulates the proofs, by asking, for example, “How does this prove it? What exactly is a proof, what is logical inference, what is contradiction, what is truth, what is falsehood?” Thus, the third field is necessary because of the second, and the second because of the first. The most important, though, the one that should occupy most of our time, is the first. But we do just the opposite. We are preoccupied with the third field and give that all our attention, passing the first by altogether. The result is that we lie – but have no difficulty proving why we shouldn’t.
— Epictetus, The Art of Living: The Classical Manual on Virtue, Happiness and Effectiveness
Treaty with Tripoli, Art. 11. As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion;
— U.S. Congress
The rich fop Francis of Assisi was bored all his life―until he fell in love with Christ and gave all his stuff away and became the troubadour of Lady Poverty.
— Peter Kreeft, Jesus-Shock
Leaving your religion and having to invent your own system of values is a big deal, after all.
— Therese Doucet
Festivals and fasts are unhinged, traveling backward at a rate of ten days per year, attached to no season. Even Laylat ul Qadr, the holiest night in Ramadan, drifts--its precise date is unknown. The iconclasm laid down by Muhammed was absolute: you must resist attachment not only to painted images, but to natural ones. Ramadan, Muharram, the Eids; you associate no religious event with the tang of snow in the air, or spring thaw, or the advent of summer. God permeates these things--as the saying goes, Allah is beautiful, and He loves beauty--but they are transient. Forced to concentrate on the eternal, you begin to see, or think you see, the bones and sinews of the world beneath its seasonal flesh. The sun and moon become formidable clockwork. They are transient also, but hint at the dark planes that stretch beyond the earth in every direction, full of stars and dust, toward a retreating, incomprehensible edge
— G. Willow Wilson, The Butterfly Mosque: A Young American Woman's Journey to Love and Islam
The philosopher's school, ye men, is a surgery: you ought not to go out of it with pleasure, but with pain. For you are not in sound health when you enter.
— Epictetus, The Discourses
I will not join the rat race because I'm not a rat. And I will not blindly follow a specific faith because I'm not a bat. The only race I'll take part in is for humans being humane. It's called the human race, and sadly it's got the least participants.
— Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem
you can measure the size of a person by what makes him or her angry
— Dale Carnegie
I want to find a way of speaking to fellow human beings that will be cool rather than heated, philosophical rather than polemical, that will bring enlightenment rather than seeking to divide us into the righteous and the sinners, the saved and the damned, the sheep and the goats.
— J.M. Coetzee, The Lives of Animals
Men seek retreats for themselves, houses in the country, sea-shores, and mountains; and thou too art wont to desire such things very much. But this is altogether a mark of the most common sort of men, for it is in thy power whenever thou shalt choose to retire into thyself. For nowhere either with more quiet or more freedom from trouble does a man retire than into his own soul, particularly when he has within him such thoughts that by looking into them he is immediately in perfect tranquility; and I affirm that tranquility is nothing else than the good ordering of the mind. Constantly then give to thyself this retreat, and renew thyself; and let thy principles be brief and fundamental, which, as soon as thou shalt recur to them, will be sufficient to cleanse the soul completely, and to send thee back free from all discontent with the things to which thou returnest. For with what art thou discontented? With the badness of men? Recall to thy mind this conclusion, that rational animals exist for one another, and that to endure is a part of justice, and that men do wrong involuntarily; and consider how many already, after mutual enmity, suspicion, hatred, and fighting, have been stretched dead, reduced to ashes; and be quiet at last.- But perhaps thou art dissatisfied with that which is assigned to thee out of the universe.- Recall to thy recollection this alternative; either there is providence or atoms, fortuitous concurrence of things; or remember the arguments by which it has been proved that the world is a kind of political community, and be quiet at last.- But perhaps corporeal things will still fasten upon thee.- Consider then further that the mind mingles not with the breath, whether moving gently or violently, when it has once drawn itself apart and discovered its own power, and think also of all that thou hast heard and assented to about pain and pleasure, and be quiet at last.- But perhaps the desire of the thing called fame will torment thee.- See how soon everything is forgotten, and look at the chaos of infinite time on each side of the present, and the emptiness of applause, and the changeableness and want of judgement in those who pretend to give praise, and the narrowness of the space within which it is circumscribed, and be quiet at last. For the whole earth is a point, and how small a nook in it is this thy dwelling, and how few are there in it, and what kind of people are they who will praise thee.
— Marcus Aurelius, The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
Before you hate something you should try to understand it.
— Martha Grimes, Dakota
There is one thing, Emma, which a man can always do if he chooses, and that is his duty; not by manoeuvring and finessing, but by vigour and resolution. - Mr. Knightley
— Jane Austen, Emma
Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
Isn't wine prohibited here?" the boy asked. "It's not what enters men's mouths that's evil," said the alchemist. "It's what comes out of their mouths that is.
— Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist
The necessity of reform mustn’t be allowed to become a form of blackmail serving to limit, reduce, or halt the exercise of criticism. Under no circumstances should one pay attention to those who tell one: “Don’t criticize, since you’re not capable of carrying out a reform.” That’s ministerial cabinet talk. Critique doesn’t have to be the premise of a deduction that concludes, “this, then, is what needs to be done.” It should be an instrument for those for who fight, those who resist and refuse what is. Its use should be in processes of conflict and confrontation, essays in refusal. It doesn’t have to lay down the law for the law. It isn’t a stage in a programming. It is a challenge directed to what is.
— Michel Foucault, The Essential Foucault: Selections from Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984
where the telescope ends the microscope begins, and who can say which has the wider vision?
— Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Philosophy is an amazing tissue of really fine thinking and incredible, puerile mistakes. It's like one of those rubber 'bones' they give dogs to chew, damned good for the mind's teeth, but as food - no bloody good at all.
— Olaf Stapledon, Odd John
Sometimes, in a summer morning,having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrisetill noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs,in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around orflitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in atmy west window, or the noise of some traveller's wagon on the distanthighway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasonslike corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of thehands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, butso much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientalsmean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, Iminded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light somework of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothingmemorable is accomplished.
— Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Knowledge can be acquired by a suitable and complete study, no matter what the starting point is. Only one must know how to 'learn.' What is nearest to us is man; and you are the nearest of all men to yourself. Begin with the study of yourself; remember the saying 'Know thyself.
— G.I. Gurdjieff, Views from the Real World: Early Talks Moscow Essentuki Tiflis Berlin London Paris NY Chicago as Recollecte
The intellectual attainments of a man who thinks for himself resemble a fine painting, where the light and shade are correct, the tone sustained, the colour perfectly harmonised; it is true to life. On the other hand, the intellectual attainments of the mere man of learning are like a large palette, full of all sorts of colours, which at most are systematically arranged, but devoid of harmony, connection and meaning.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena
The egocentric is always frustrated, simply because the condition of self-perfection is self-surrender. There must be a willingness to die to the lower part of self, before there can be a birth to the nobler.
— Fulton J. Sheen, Seven Words of Jesus and Mary: Lessons from Cana and Calvary
There would be no society if living together depended upon understanding each other.
— Eric Hoffer
Man’s mind is his basic tool of survival. Life is given to him, survival is not. His body is given to him, its sustenance is not. His mind is given to him, its content is not. To remain alive, he must act, and before he can act he must know the nature and purpose of his action. He cannot obtain his food without a knowledge of food and of the way to obtain it. He cannot dig a ditch – or build a cyclotron – without a knowledge of his aim and of the means to achieve it. To remain alive, he must think.	“But to think is an act of choice. The key to what you so recklessly call ‘human nature,’ the open secret you live with, yet dread to name, is the fact that man is a being of volitional consciousness. Reason does not work automatically; thinking is not a mechanical process; the connections of logic are not made by instinct. The function of your stomach, lungs, or heart is automatic; the function of your mind is not. In any hour and issue of your life, you are free to think or to evade that effort. But you are not free to escape from your nature, from the fact that reason is your means of survival – so that for you, who are a human being, the question ‘to be or not to be’ is the question ‘to think or not to think.’ . . . 	“Man has no automatic code of survival. His particular distinction from all other living species is the necessity to act in the face of alternatives by means of volitional choice. . . Man must obtain his knowledge and choose his actions by a process of thinking, which nature will not force him to perform. Man has the power to act as his own destroyer – and that is the way he has acted through most of his history (pages 1012-1013).
— Ayn Rand
6.4311Der Tod ist kein Ereignis des Lebens. Den Tod erlebt man nicht.Wenn man unter Ewigkeit nicht unendliche Zeitdauer, sondern Unzeitlichkeit versteht, dann lebt der ewig, der in der Gegenwart lebt.Unser Leben ist ebenso endlos, wie unser Gesichtsfeld grenzenlos ist.6.4311Death is not an event of life. Death is not lived through.If by eternity is understood not endless temporal duration but timelessness, then he lives eternally who lives in the present.Our life is endless in the way that our visual field is without limit.
— Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
I made art a philosophy, and philosophy an art: I altered the minds of men, and the colour of things: I awoke the imagination of my century so that it created myth and legend around me: I summed up all things in a phrase, all existence in an epigram: whatever I touched I made beautiful
— Oscar Wilde, De Profundis and Other Writings