Greatest Philosophy Quotes & Sayings

Ever since I was in Amherst College I have remembered how Garman told his class in philosophy that if they would go along with events and have the courage and industry to hold to the main stream, without being washed ashore by the immaterial cross currents, they would someday be men of power. He meant that we should try to guide ourselves by general principles and not get lost in particulars. That may sound like mysticism, but it is only the mysticism that envelopes every great truth. One of the greatest mysteries in the world is the success that lies in conscientious work. — Calvin Coolidge

The greatest discovery of the 21st century will be the discovery that Man was not meant to live at the speed of light. — Marshall McLuhan

Kindness is the greatest love,
it is the healing touch,
it is the light of our soul,
it is a message from the heart. — Debasish Mridha

The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest-Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure, and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure. — John Stuart Mill

The greatest thinker we can ever think of is Jesus Christ. He knew how to make His contenders ponder in awe — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Is it just possible,' he sighed, 'that the most vigorous and obldest idealists have been the worst enemies of human progress instead of its greatest creators? — Sinclair Lewis

The greatest happiness is a quiet kind. It's the tender understanding that we're living in a very strange place full of strange creatures. And there's quite a bit of wonder in that. — F.K. Preston

Space is infinite. To the mind that means freedom, liberation.' So wrote Arisko, our greatest turkle philosopher, in his most famous work, 'Thoughts In A Bathtub'," said Dottia, dreamily, in an inspired state. — Philip Dodd

French philosopher whom professional philosophers generally accord highest honors is Descartes. Montaigne and Pascal, Voltaire and Rousseau, Bergson and Sartre do not enjoy their greatest vogue among philosophers, and of these only Rousseau has had any considerable influence on the history of philosophy (through Kant and Hegel). — Friedrich Nietzsche

The real Journey is a personal venture into your own mind content. Nobody, not the greatest mystic, the most vaunted guru, the most hailed psychologist, though they might shuttle you along the trail for a ways, will get you there. Only you yourself can do that. — Thomas Daniel Nehrer

In my opinion it is a grand book ... Morally and philosophically I find myself in agreement with virtually the whole of it: and not only in agreement with it, but in deeply moved agreement ... What we need therefore, in my opinion, is not a change in our economic programmes, which would only lead in practice to disillusion with the results of your philosophy; but perhaps even the contrary, namely, an enlargement of them. Your greatest danger is the probable practical failure of the application of your philosophy in the United States. — John Maynard Keynes

Contrary to the ecologists, nature does not stand still and does not maintain the kind of equilibrium that guarantees the survival of any particular species - least of all the survival of her greatest and most fragile product: man. — Ayn Rand

Power of softness and kindness are the greatest. — Debasish Mridha

The greatest victory comes not from winning against enemies but from winning over one's self. — Debasish Mridha

The spectacle of nature, by growing quite familiar to him, becomes at last equally indifferent. It is constantly the same order, constantly the same revolutions; he has not sense enough to feel surprise at the sight of the greatest wonders; and it is not in his mind we must look for that philosophy, which man must have to know how to observe once, what he has every day seen. Jean Jacques Rousseau, On the Inequality among Mankind, Ch. 1, 20. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Although the church accomplishes many tasks, its only message to the world is the gospel of Christ. Everything else we do is merely an extension of that primary goal. The gospel we offer the lost is superior to every worldly philosophy. Never outdated or in need of correction, it is always sufficient to meet humanity's greatest need: reconciliation with the Creator. — Charles Stanley

Hindu philosophy was one of the greatest beneficiaries of the advent and the teachings of the Lord Buddha. I revere Buddha as a reformer of not only Hinduism but also the world, who has given all of us a new world view and vision which is critical for the survival of all of us and the entire world. — Narendra Modi

There is a certain proper and luxurious way of lying in bed. Confucius, that great artist of life, "never lay straight" in bed, "like a corpse", but always curled up on one side. I believe one of the greatest pleasures of life is to curl up one's legs in bed. The posture of the arms is also very important, in order to reach the greatest degree of aesthetic pleasure and mental power. I believe the best posture is not lying flat on the bed, but being upholstered with big soft pillows at an angle of thirty degrees with either one arm or both arms placed behind the back of one's head. — Lin Yutang

The greatest ethical test that we're ever going to face is the treatment of those who are at our mercy. — Lyn White

Wherever you find the greatest good, you will find the greatest evil, because evil loves paradise as much as good. — Wallace Stegner

Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious. — Thomas Aquinas

The greatest donation that you can give in life is the donation of unconditional love. — Debasish Mridha

Life is a mission but death is the greatest adventure. — Debasish Mridha

Your greatest competence are your courage and confident. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Kindness is the greatest gift for the humanity. Nothing is more important than to be kind to each other. — Debasish Mridha

Love is the greatest gift to life. — Debasish Mridha

The greatest joy you can get is from giving, and the best thing that you can give is your love. — Debasish Mridha

The greatest foe of human is his mighty wisdom. — Chandrashekar

Certainly, one of the greatest achievements of the human intellectual spirit was the Arabic Translation Movement. Over the course of about 100 years, virtually the entire Greek Scientific and philosophical corpus was either translated or summarized into Arabic (McGinnis, 10). — Jon McGinnis

Truth ... Overcome the valley of your despair and it will lead you onto some of the greatest roads of your life! — Timothy Pina

As a philosophy, utilitarianism is the argument you can objectively determine what is the greatest good for the greatest number of people and we need the state to achieve that end. — Stefan Molyneux

Philosophy's greatest task is to enlarge our sense of possibility. — Susan Neiman

Your personal philosophy is the greatest determining factor in how your life works out. — Jim Rohn

We are swimming upstream against a great torrent of disorganization ... In this, our main obligation is to establish arbitrary enclaves of order and system ... It is the greatest possible victory to be, to continue to be, and to have been. No defeat can deprive us of the success of having existed for some moment of time in a universe that seems indifferent to us.
This is no defeatism ... The declaration of our own nature and the attempt to build up an enclave of organization in the face of nature's overwhelming tendency to disorder is an insolence against the gods and the iron necessity that they impose. Here lies tragedy, but here lies glory too ...
All this represents the manner in which I believe I have been able to add something positive to the pessimism of ... the existensialists. I have not replaced the gloom of existence by a philosophy which is optimistic in any Pollyanna sense, but ... with a positive attitude toward the universe and toward our life in it. — Norbert Wiener

I swear to you the architects shall appear without fall, I swear to you they will understand you and justify you, The greatest among them shall be he who best knows you, and encloses all and is faithful to all, He and the rest shall not forget you, they shall perceive that you are not an iota less than they, You shall be fully glorified in them. — Walt Whitman

The greatest purpose of life is to serve the suffering humanity with love and kindness. — Debasish Mridha

The greatest obstacle to success is the fear of failure. — Debasish Mridha

The greatest and perhaps only utility of all philosophy of pure reason is thus only negative, namely that it does not serve for expansion, as an organon, but rather, as a discipline, serves for the determination of boundaries, and instead of discovering truth it has only the silent merit of guarding against errors — Immanuel Kant

Knowledge of thyself is the greatest enlightenment. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Elegant and lucid ... a pitch-perfect clarion call, issued not with preachy hubris but from a deep place of humility, for awakening to the greatest rewards of living ... The Road to Character is an essential read in its entirety-Anne Lamott with a harder edge of moral philosophy, Seneca with a softer edge of spiritual sensitivity, E. F. Schumacher for perplexed moderns. — Maria Popova

The greatest joy of life is not on achieving but in serving, loving, and giving. — Debasish Mridha

But some of the greatest achievements in philosophy could only be compared with taking up some books which seemed to belong together, and putting them on different shelves; nothing more being final about their positions than that they no longer lie side by side. The onlooker who doesn't know the difficulty of the task might well think in such a case that nothing at all had been achieved. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

He believed hunger to be the best appetizer, and because he waited until he was hungry or thirsty before he ate or drank, "he used to partake of a barley cake with greater pleasure than others did of the costliest of foods, and enjoyed a drink from a stream of running water more than others did their Thasian wine."6 When asked about his lack of an abode, Diogenes would reply that he had access to the greatest houses in every city - to their temples and gymnasia, that is. And when asked what he had learned from philosophy, Diogenes replied, "To be prepared for every fortune."7 This reply, as we shall see, anticipates one important theme of Stoicism. The — William B. Irvine

Gratitude is one of the greatest attitudes of the human heart. — Debasish Mridha

Greatest risk in life is not to take any risk. — Debasish Mridha

The greatest obstacle to human liberty is that the vast majority of people do not wish to be free. — Michel Templet

The greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it. — Ayn Rand

It does not matter where one comes from, one can achieve even the greatest of things in life. — Ndiritu Wahome

I mean really, how could an artistic individual stay grounded in the nitty-gritty of how many minutes per pound meat has to stay in the oven when trying to fathom the creative philosophy behind the greatest artistic minds of the world? — E.A. Bucchianeri

Hence the great irony: Hayek, one of the greatest champions of individual liberty and economic freedom the world has ever known, believed that knowledge was communal. Dewey, the champion of socialism and collectivism, believed that knowledge was individual. Hayek's is a philosophy that treats individuals as the best judges of their own self-interests, which in turn yield staggering communal cooperation. Dewey's was the philosophy of a giant, Monty Pythonesque crowd shouting on cue: We're All Individuals! — Jonah Goldberg

Love is the greatest gift of life. Those who give and receive are blessed with the ecstasy of life. — Debasish Mridha

The Germans are the most philosophic people in the world, and the greatest smokers: now I trace their philosophy to their smoking. Smoking has a sedative effect upon the nerves, and enables a man to bear the sorrows of this life (of which every one has his share) not only decently, but dignifiedly. — George Henry Borrow

The greatest discovery is self-discovery. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The greatest wealth is a loving peaceful mind. — Debasish Mridha

The Bible is the greatest literature of all times. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Today we are living the grotesque spectacle of the poisoning
of the earth by the nineteenth-century hero system of unrestrained
material production. This is perhaps the greatest and most pervasive
evil to have emerged in all of history, and it may even
eventually defeat all of mankind. Still there are no "twisted" people
whom we can hold responsible for this. — Ernest Becker

Learning to forgive is the greatest way to find inner peace. — Debasish Mridha

Many of the greatest works of philosophy seem to me to be valuable not because of their arguments, but because they offer us perspectives that open up new possibilities. They show us how we might start in different places, and not buy into the assumptions tacitly made on the first pages of the philosophical works that have influenced us. — Philip Kitcher

Life is the greatest sacred existence. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Kindness, not rituals, is mankind's greatest prayer. — Debasish Mridha

Happiness is the greatest gift of life, nothing else matters. — Debasish Mridha

Where have i=I read that at the end, when life, surface upon surface, has become completely encrusted with experience, you know everything, the secret, the power, and the glory, why you were born, why you are dying, and how it all could have been different? You are wise. But the greatest wisdom, at that moment, is knowing that your wisdom is too late. You understand everything when there is no longer anything to understand. — Umberto Eco

How significant is Aristotle? Well, I wouldn't want to exaggerate, so let me put it this way: Abandoning Aristotelianism, as the founders of modern philosophy did, was the single greatest mistake ever made in the entire history of Western thought. — Edward Feser

My mother was the greatest philosopher. I am nothing but a reflection of her imagination. — Debasish Mridha

Can that which is the greatest virtue in philosophy, doubt (called by Galileo the father of invention), be in religion what the priests term it, the greatest of sins? — Christian Nestell Bovee

The state owned monopolies are among the greatest millstones round the neck of the economy ... Liberals must stress at all times the virtues of the market, not only for efficiency but to enable the widest possible choice ... Much of what Mrs Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph say and do is in the mainstream of liberal philosophy. — Jo Grimond

Being our Self is the wisest philosophy, the bravest action, the kindest consideration and the greatest act of healing imaginable. — Robert Holden

The greatest investment in life is the investment of unconditional love, as a profit you will get the greatest gift of life: happiness. — Debasish Mridha

Your greatest adventure is written inside of you — Rassool Jibraeel Snyman

The two greatest warriors are Truth and Time. Be sure to march behind, and not against, them. — Neel Burton

So far there has been no philosopher in whose hands philosophy has not grown into an apology for knowledge; on this point, at least, every one is an optimist, that the greatest usefulness must be ascribed to knowledge. They are all tyrannized over by logic, and this is optimism in its essence. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Love could not induce us to take on the burden of propagating the species without promising us the greatest happiness we could imagine. — Alain De Botton

Philosophy has been a masked ball in which a religious image of humankind is renewed in the guise humanist ideas of progress and enlightenment. Even philosophy's greatest unmaskers have ended up as figures in the masquerade. Removing the masks from our animal faces is a task that has hardly begun. — John N. Gray

Indeed, this is perhaps the greatest Christian paradox of all - that the world's most paradoxical religion has cultivated rationalism and scientific rigor more diligently than any of its rivals, making the Christian world safe for philosophy as well as fervor, for the study of nature as well as the contemplation of divinity. — Ross Douthat

Life gives us the greatest opportunity to serve and be happy. — Debasish Mridha

Fortunately or unfortunately, the greatest authority on matters of life is life itself. — Raheel Farooq

Education is the greatest manifestation of the innate potential of human mind. — Abhijit Naskar

The greatest philosophy comes form the 'insanest' of people. — Rebeca T. Isbell

The things that pose the greatest threats to your survival are the most real things. — Jordan B. Peterson

Fear is the greatest obstacle to any adventure. — Lailah Gifty Akita

The greatest wealth in life is love. The greatest gift to give away is to feel the joy of life and is also love. — Debasish Mridha

The rage for wanting to conclude is one of the most deadly and most fruitless manias to befall humanity. Each religion and each philosophy has pretended to have God to itself, to measure the infinite, and to know the recipe for happiness. What arrogance and what nonsense! I see, to the contrary, that the greatest geniuses and the greatest works have never concluded. — Gustave Flaubert

What about the virtue of letting others be themselves? Is this not the greatest virtue of all? — Joshua Emmet

The greatest loss is the lost of life. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Here is need for a person to be generally educated. Otherwise you shrivel up much too soon. Whether this means reading the bible (I read the New Testament every few years) or reading the great 19th century novelists (the greatest and shrewdest judge of people and of society who ever lived), or classical philosophy (which I cannot read-it puts me to sleep immediately), or history (which is secondary). What matters is that the knowledge worker, by the time he or she reaches middle age, has developed and nourished a human being rather than a tax accountant or a hydraulic engineer. — Peter Drucker

That day, after barely resurfacing from a seventy-two meter warm up dive into the Blue Hole, Mevoli went into cardiac arrest and died. This time, he wasn't able to bring himself back. When asked to comment on the accident, Natalia Molchanova, regarded by many as the greatest freehold breath diver in the world, said, "the biggest problem with freedivers . . . [is] now they go too deep too fast." Less than two years later, off the coast of Spain, Molchanova took a quick recreational dive of her
own. She deliberately ran though her usual set of breathing exercises, attached a light weight to her belt to help her descend, and swam downward, alone. It was
supposed to be a head-clearing reset. But, Molchanova didn't come back either.
And that's the problem that free diving shares with many other state-shifting techniques: return too soon, and you'll always wonder if you could have gone
deeper. Go too far, and you might not make it back. — Steven Kotler

We've all felt the pain inflicted by hurtful people...Just remember it's NOT your problem so don't waste any energy stressing about it. It doesn't necessarily follow that because you are kind, others will be kind to you. Just keep moving forward and be the best you can be because the greatest impact and growth will occur wherever your FOCUS is — Karen Gibbs

The greatest power that a human possesses is the power of pure love. — Debasish Mridha

The greatest undiscovered splendid wealth is hidden in the most exquisite palace in the never ending land of your mind. You just have to find the wealth. — Debasish Mridha

One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else. — K.L. Toth

This moment is our greatest treasure. We cannot replay the past events. We have no control over future events. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Plato and Aristotle are my teachers. Even Kant is my teacher, but my greatest teacher is my failures. — Debasish Mridha

The greatest secret of life is never give up. Don't give up on yourself, your dreams and your family. — Lailah Gifty Akita

For the first time after so many years I come back to cry aloud in the desert. Because this is the mission of the intellectual who is truly a prophet - to cry in the desert. The greatest of the prophets, Isaiah, made it notable, of course, when he spoke of himself as the voice of one "crying in the wilderness." Because the mission of the intellectual is to be the man who, from his desert, his basic solitude - and man is only man amid his truth, only himself when he is alone - cries aloud to others and invites them to each into his own solitude. — Jose Ortega Y Gasset

Love, caring, and the spirit of kindness always bring happiness. Our greatest happiness depends on what we love, how we care, and how we share. — Debasish Mridha

A philosopher might have deplored this lack of mental ambition, but only if he was really certain about where his next meal was coming from.
In fact Lancre's position and climate bred a hard-headed and straightforward people who often excelled in the world down below. it had supplied the planins with many of their greatest wizards and witches and, once again, the philospher might have marveled that such a four-square people could give the world so many successful magical practitioners, being quite unaware that only those with their feet on rock can build castles in the air. — Terry Pratchett

Life has no destination; it is the greatest journey with the greatest intention. — Debasish Mridha

And indeed nothing but the most determined scepticism, along with a great degree of indolence, can justify this aversion to metaphysics. For if truth be at all within the reach of human capacity, it is certain it must lie very deep and abstruse: and to hope we shall arrive at it without pains, while the greatest geniuses have failed with the utmost pains, must certainly be esteemed sufficiently vain and presumptuous. I pretend to no such advantage in the philosophy I am going to unfold, and would esteem it a strong presumption against it, were it so very easy and obvious. — David Hume

Children are the greatest philosophers : the questions that children ask require the deepest of thoughts and the longest of reflections on life! — Avijeet Das

The greatest untold story is the evolution of God. — G.I. Gurdjieff