Famous Quotes & Sayings

Baruch Spinoza

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

Baruch Spinoza

I can control my passions and emotions if I can understand their nature

Jane Smiley

'Ape House' is an ambitious novel in several ways, for which it is to be admired, and it is certainly an easy read, but because Gruen is not quite prepared for the philosophical implications of her subject, it is not as deeply involving emotionally or as interesting thematically as it could be.

Blaise Pascal

Vanity is so anchored in the heart of man that a soldier, a soldier's servant, a cook, a porter brags and wishes to have his admirers. Even philosophers wish for them. Those who write against vanity want to have the glory of having written well; and those who read it desire the glory of having read it. I who write this have perhaps this desire, and perhaps those who will read it.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination.

Arthur Schopenhauer

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Obstinacy is the result of the will forcing itself into the place of the intellect.

Arthur Schopenhauer

The longer a man's fame is likely to last, the longer it will be in coming.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

Arthur Schopenhauer

In every page of David Hume, there is more to be learned than from Hegel's, Herbart's and Schleiermacher's complete philosophical works.

Arthur Schopenhauer

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

Arthur Schopenhauer

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

Bruce Lee

If you think a thing is impossible,you'll only make it impossible.

Bruce Lee

The consciousness of self is the greatest hindrance to the proper execution of all physical action.

Eleanor Roosevelt

it is harder to be philosophical when you are young.

Aristotle

Happiness is the highest good

Aristotle

The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.

David Cronenberg

As a filmmaker, I ask questions but don't have answers. Moviemaking is a philosophical exploration. I invite the audience to come on the journey and discover what they think and feel.

Annie Besant

A myth is far truer than a history, for a history only gives a story of the shadows, whereas a myth gives a story of the substances that cast the shadows.

Andre Gide

To understand is nothing, but to be understood-that is the problem and the source of anguish. The soul throbs and would have the other know-but can not and feels isolated. Then come gestures, words, awkward explanations and material symbols for imponderable outbursts of feeling-and the soul despairs.

Robert Anton Wilson

Certitude is seized by some minds, not because there is any philosophical justification for it, but because such minds have an emotional need for certitude.

Tariq Ramadan

We have to reconcile ourselves with philosophical questions in every field. Every field should be open to inquiry and knowledge.

T. S. Eliot

And right action is freedom From past and future also.

Simone Weil

The entire universe is nothing but a great metaphor.

Steve Nash

You have good games, you have bad games. You have good years, you have bad years. I have always been kind of philosophical about that.

Ron Rash

Like Flannery O'Connor, McCorkle's genius is to give us both philosophical speculation and a riveting narrative filled with unforgettable characters. Great writing, poignancy, humor, wisdom-all are in abundance here. Jill McCorkle is one of the South's greatest writers; she is also one of America's.

Roger Zelazny

Good evening, Lord Corwin,' said the lean, cadaverous figure who rested against a storage rack, smoking his pipe, grinning around it. Good evening, Roger. How are things in the nether world?' A rat, a bat, a spider. Nothing much else astir. Peaceful.' You enjoy this duty?' He nodded. I am writing a philosophical romance shot through with elements of horror and morbidity. I work on those parts down here.

Roger Zelazny

Even the most heartening of philosophical vistas is no match for, say, a toothache, if it happens to be your own.

Steve Jobs

Part of what made the Macintosh great was that the people working on it were musicians and poets and artists and zoologists and historians who also happened to be the best computer scientists in the world.

Tina Fey

It has been said that to write is to live forever. The man who said that is dead.

Sam Harris

We can either have a twenty-first-century conversation about morality and the human well-being - a conversation in which we avail ourselves of all scientific insights and philosophical arguments that have accumulated in the last two thousand years of human discourse - or we can confine ourselves to a first-century conversation as it is preserved in the Bible.

S. I. Hayakawa

If everybody is rewarded just for being alive, you get the same sort of effect as you do when you reward every student just for being enrolled. You destroy not only education, you destroy society by giving A's to everyone. This is a philosophical consideration that bothers me very much as I sit in the United States Senate and see the great budget allocations going through.

Stefan Zweig

With Nietzsche, the black pirates' flag appears for the first time on the high sea of German knowledge. (He is) a different man, from a different race, (his,) a new kind of heroism, philosophywith bellicose weapons and armor.