Famous Quotes & Sayings

Epictetus

If you wish to be a writer, write.

Epictetus

If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.

Epictetus

Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly.

Jonathan Ive

I think there is a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity; in clarity, in efficiency. True simplicity is derived from so much more than just the absence of clutter and ornamentation. It's about bringing order to complexity.

Niccolo Machiavelli

It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles.

Niccolo Machiavelli

I'm not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.

Niccolo Machiavelli

A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.

Niccolo Machiavelli

It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.

Niccolo Machiavelli

We cannot attribute to fortune or virtue that which is achieved without either.

Niccolo Machiavelli

One can generally say this about men: that they are ungrateful, fickle, simulators and deceivers, avoiders of danger, greedy for gain; and while you work for their good they are completely yours, offering you their blood, their property, their lives, and their sons when danger is far away; but when it comes nearer to you, they turn away.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Tardiness often robs us opportunity, and the dispatch of our forces.

Nelson Rockefeller

The fundamental question for the United States is how it can cooperate to help meet the basic needs of the people of the hemisphere despite the philosophical disagreements it may have with the nature of particular regimes. It must seek pragmatic ways to help people without necessarily embracing their governments. It should recognize that diplomatic relations are merely practical conveniences and not measures of moral judgment.

Noam Chomsky

The only debatable issue, it seems to me, is whether it is more ridiculous to turn to experts in social theory for general well-confirmed propositions, or to the specialists in the great religions and philosophical systems for insights into fundamental human values.

Evan Parker

There are many of these apparent philosophical paradoxes or contradictions which don't concern me anymore.

Karl Marx

The history of all previous societies has been the history of class struggles.

Karl Marx

Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the laborer, unless under compulsion from society.

Karl Marx

For the bureaucrat, the world is a mere object to be manipulated by him.

Karl Marx

While the miser is merely a capitalist gone mad, the capitalist is a rational miser.

Karl Marx

A specter is haunting Europe - the specter of communism.

Karl Marx

Landlords, like all other men, love to reap where they never sowed.

Karl Marx

The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

Karl Marx

The rich will do anything for the poor but get off their backs.

Karl Marx

Men's ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.

Karl Marx

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

Moliere

No matter what everybody says, ultimately these things can harm us only by the way we react to them.

Julian Baggini

The only good reason to embrace a philosophical position is that you are convinced it is true or at least makes sense of the world better than the alternatives.

Julian Barnes

...life is a gift bestowed without anyone asking for it; that the thinking person has a philosophical duty to examine both the nature of life and the conditions it comes with; and that if this person decides to renounce the gift no one asks for, it is the moral and human duty to act on the consequences of that decision.

Mark Twain

It may be called the Master Passion, the hunger for self-approval.

Black is the absence of all color. White is the presence of all colors. I suppose life must be one or the other. On the whole, though, I think I would prefer color to its absence. But then black does add depth and texture to color. Perhaps certain shades of gray are necessary to a complete palette. Even unrelieved black. Ah, a deep philosophical question. Is black necessary to life, even a happy life? Could we ever be happy if we did not at least occasionally experience misery?

Martin Heidegger

True time is four-dimensional.

Martin Heidegger

The human body is essentially something other than an animal organism.

Martin Heidegger

We do not say: Being is, time is, but rather: there is Being and there is time.

Martin Heidegger

The possible ranks higher than the actual.