The Quotations Archive

The owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the onset of dusk.

G. W. F. Hegel · Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Preface

German Idealism · trans. H. B. Nisbet (1991)

Editorial note: Philosophy understands a form of life only once it is finished, which is a limit on the discipline rather than a boast about it.

What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational.

G. W. F. Hegel · Elements of the Philosophy of Right, Preface

German Idealism · trans. H. B. Nisbet (1991)

Editorial note: Read as approval of whatever exists it is indefensible; Hegel's 'actual' means what has realised its own concept, not merely what happens to be the case.

Self-consciousness exists in and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another.

G. W. F. Hegel · Phenomenology of Spirit §178

German Idealism · trans. A. V. Miller (1977)

Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Ludwig Wittgenstein · Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 7

Analytic Philosophy · trans. C. K. Ogden (1922)

Editorial note: The last line of the book, and the whole of its seventh proposition.

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein · Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 5.6

Analytic Philosophy · trans. C. K. Ogden (1922)

The meaning of a word is its use in the language.

Ludwig Wittgenstein · Philosophical Investigations §43

Analytic Philosophy · trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (1953)

Editorial note: Quoted from the middle of the remark; Wittgenstein restricts the claim to a large class of cases rather than to every use of the word.

The 'essence' of Dasein lies in its existence.

Martin Heidegger · Being and Time §9

Phenomenology · trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (1962)

Language is the house of Being.

Martin Heidegger · Letter on Humanism

Phenomenology · trans. Frank A. Capuzzi with J. Glenn Gray (1977)

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates · Plato, Apology 38a

Classical Greek · trans. Common English rendering; cf. Benjamin Jowett (1871)

Editorial note: The Greek evokes scrutiny or cross-examination rather than mere reflection.

What I do not know, I do not think I know either.

Socrates · Plato, Apology 21d

Classical Greek · trans. After Benjamin Jowett (1871)

Love is the desire for the perpetual possession of the good.

Plato · Symposium 206a

Platonism · trans. After Benjamin Jowett (1871)

Man is by nature a political animal.

Aristotle · Politics 1253a

Aristotelianism · trans. Benjamin Jowett (1885)

Happiness is an activity of the soul in accordance with virtue.

Aristotle · Nicomachean Ethics I.7

Aristotelianism · trans. After W. D. Ross (1908)

Editorial note: Condensed from a longer passage.

We become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts.

Aristotle · Nicomachean Ethics 1103b

Aristotelianism · trans. W. D. Ross (1908)

It is owing to their wonder that men both now begin and at first began to philosophize.

Aristotle · Metaphysics 982b

Aristotelianism · trans. W. D. Ross (1908)

Let no one be slow to seek wisdom when he is young nor weary in the search thereof when he is grown old.

Epicurus · Letter to Menoeceus

Epicureanism · trans. Robert Drew Hicks (1925)

Death is nothing to us; for what has dissolved has no sensation.

Epicurus · Principal Doctrines 2

Epicureanism · trans. After Robert Drew Hicks (1925)

Some things are in our control and others not.

Epictetus · Enchiridion 1

Stoicism · trans. Elizabeth Carter (1758)

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the views which they take of them.

Epictetus · Enchiridion 5

Stoicism · trans. Elizabeth Carter (1758)

Editorial note: Often paraphrased as “it is not things that disturb us, but our judgements”.

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

Seneca · Moral Letters to Lucilius 13

Stoicism · trans. After Richard M. Gummere (1917)

Life is long if you know how to use it.

Seneca · On the Shortness of Life 2

Stoicism · trans. John W. Basore (1932)

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste much of it.

Seneca · On the Shortness of Life 1.3

Stoicism · trans. John W. Basore (1932)

The mind converts and changes every hindrance to its activity into an aid.

Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 5.20

Stoicism · trans. George Long (1862)

Editorial note: Often paraphrased as “the obstacle is the way”.

Confine yourself to the present.

Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 7.29

Stoicism · trans. George Long (1862)

Take away the complaint “I have been harmed”, and the harm is taken away.

Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 4.7

Stoicism · trans. After George Long (1862)

Very little is needed to make a happy life.

Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 7.67

Stoicism · trans. George Long (1862)

I am a citizen of the world.

Diogenes of Sinope · Reported in Diogenes Laertius, Lives VI.63

Cynicism · trans. Robert Drew Hicks (1925)

Editorial note: Ancient but second-hand: reported rather than certain.

It is not possible to step twice into the same river.

Heraclitus · Fragment 91, reported by Plutarch

Presocratic · trans. After John Burnet (1912)

Editorial note: Heraclitus survives only in fragments quoted by later writers.

Our heart is restless until it rests in you.

Augustine · Confessions 1.1

Christian Platonism · trans. After E. B. Pusey (1838)

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know; if I wish to explain it to one who asks, I know not.

Augustine · Confessions 11.14

Christian Platonism · trans. E. B. Pusey (1838)

I think, therefore I am.

René Descartes · Discourse on the Method, Part IV

Rationalism · trans. Elizabeth Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (1911)

Editorial note: The Latin “cogito, ergo sum” appears in later Latin editions.

A free man thinks of death least of all things.

Baruch Spinoza · Ethics IV, Proposition 67

Rationalism · trans. R. H. M. Elwes (1883)

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

Baruch Spinoza · Ethics V, Proposition 42

Rationalism · trans. R. H. M. Elwes (1883)

The mind is at first what we may call white paper, void of all characters.

John Locke · An Essay Concerning Human Understanding II.i.2

Empiricism · trans. Original English (1689)

Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions.

David Hume · A Treatise of Human Nature 2.3.3

Empiricism · trans. Original English (1739–40)

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.

David Hume · An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding X

Empiricism · trans. Original English (1748)

Have courage to use your own understanding.

Immanuel Kant · An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? (1784)

Transcendental idealism · trans. After Mary C. Smith (1917)

Editorial note: Kant’s Latin motto in the original: “Sapere aude”.

Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never merely as a means.

Immanuel Kant · Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals 4:429

Transcendental idealism · trans. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (1873)

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

Immanuel Kant · Critique of Practical Reason, Conclusion

Transcendental idealism · trans. Thomas Kingsmill Abbott (1873)

Man can do what he wills, but he cannot will what he wills.

Arthur Schopenhauer · On the Freedom of the Will (1839)

Pessimism · trans. After Konstantin Kolenda (1960)

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

Søren Kierkegaard · The Concept of Anxiety (1844)

Existentialism · trans. After Walter Lowrie, The Concept of Dread (1944)

Editorial note: Wording varies between English translations.

Life must be understood backwards.

Søren Kierkegaard · Journals, 1843

Existentialism · trans. After Alexander Dru (1938)

If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how.

Friedrich Nietzsche · Twilight of the Idols, Maxims and Arrows 12

Nihilism · trans. Walter Kaufmann (1954)

Editorial note: Widely paraphrased as “he who has a why can bear almost any how”.

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster.

Friedrich Nietzsche · Beyond Good and Evil 146

Nihilism · trans. Walter Kaufmann (1966)

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.

Karl Marx · Theses on Feuerbach XI (1845)

Marxism · trans. W. Lough, Marx and Engels Collected Works

Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please.

Karl Marx · The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852)

Marxism · trans. After Saul K. Padover

Existence precedes essence.

Jean-Paul Sartre · Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946)

Existentialism · trans. Philip Mairet (1948)

Man is condemned to be free.

Jean-Paul Sartre · Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946)

Existentialism · trans. Philip Mairet (1948)

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

Simone de Beauvoir · The Second Sex (1949), Book II

Existentialism · trans. H. M. Parshley (1953)

One must imagine Sisyphus happy.

Albert Camus · The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

Absurdism · trans. Justin O’Brien (1955)

I rebel, therefore we exist.

Albert Camus · The Rebel (1951)

Absurdism · trans. Anthony Bower (1956)

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

Albert Camus · Return to Tipasa, in Summer (1952)

Absurdism · trans. Ellen Conroy Kennedy (1968)

Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation.

Hannah Arendt · The Human Condition (1958)

Political philosophy · trans. Original English (1958)

Forgiveness is the only reaction which acts in an unexpected way and so retains, though being a reaction, something of the original character of action.

Hannah Arendt · The Human Condition (1958)

Political philosophy · trans. Original English (1958)

Men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.

Hannah Arendt · The Human Condition (1958)

Political philosophy · trans. Original English (1958)

Until philosophers rule as kings, cities will have no rest from evils.

Plato · Republic 473d–e

Platonism · trans. After Benjamin Jowett (1871)

Editorial note: Condensed from Plato’s longer formulation of philosopher-rulers.

Those who pursue philosophy aright study nothing but dying and being dead.

Plato · Phaedo 64a

Platonism · trans. Benjamin Jowett (1871)

All men by nature desire to know.

Aristotle · Metaphysics 980a

Aristotelianism · trans. W. D. Ross (1908)

It is impossible to live pleasantly without living prudently and honorably and justly.

Epicurus · Principal Doctrines 5

Epicureanism · trans. Robert Drew Hicks (1925)

Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen.

Epictetus · Enchiridion 8

Stoicism · trans. Elizabeth Carter (1758), modernized

Begin the morning by saying to yourself, I shall meet with the busy-body, the ungrateful, arrogant, deceitful, envious, unsocial.

Marcus Aurelius · Meditations 2.1

Stoicism · trans. George Long (1862)

Stand a little out of my sun.

Diogenes of Sinope · Reported in Diogenes Laertius, Lives VI.38

Cynicism · trans. Robert Drew Hicks (1925)

Editorial note: The famous reply to Alexander is a later report, not a writing by Diogenes.

Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new.

Augustine · Confessions 10.27

Christian Platonism · trans. After E. B. Pusey (1838)

Grace does not destroy nature but perfects it.

Thomas Aquinas · Summa Theologiae I.1.8 ad 2

Scholasticism · trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province (1920)

Divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible.

René Descartes · Discourse on the Method, Part II

Rationalism · trans. Elizabeth Haldane and G. R. T. Ross (1911)

The more we understand particular things, the more do we understand God.

Baruch Spinoza · Ethics V, Proposition 24

Rationalism · trans. R. H. M. Elwes (1883)

No man’s knowledge here can go beyond his experience.

John Locke · An Essay Concerning Human Understanding IV.iii.6

Empiricism · trans. Original English (1689)

Custom, then, is the great guide of human life.

David Hume · An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding V

Empiricism · trans. Original English (1748)

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

Immanuel Kant · Critique of Pure Reason A51/B75

Transcendental idealism · trans. Norman Kemp Smith (1929)

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Arthur Schopenhauer · Parerga and Paralipomena, Psychological Observations

Pessimism · trans. After T. Bailey Saunders (1890)

Subjectivity is truth.

Søren Kierkegaard · Concluding Unscientific Postscript (1846)

Existentialism · trans. After David F. Swenson and Walter Lowrie (1941)

Editorial note: A compressed form of a longer argument about existing inwardly.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.

Friedrich Nietzsche · The Gay Science 125

Nihilism · trans. Walter Kaufmann (1974)

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Karl Marx · The Communist Manifesto, Part I

Marxism · trans. Samuel Moore (1888)

Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.

Jean-Paul Sartre · Existentialism Is a Humanism (1946)

Existentialism · trans. Philip Mairet (1948)

The body is not a thing, it is a situation.

Simone de Beauvoir · The Second Sex (1949), Introduction

Existentialism · trans. H. M. Parshley (1953)

The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.

Albert Camus · The Myth of Sisyphus (1942)

Absurdism · trans. Justin O’Brien (1955)

Power springs up between men when they act together and vanishes the moment they disperse.

Hannah Arendt · The Human Condition (1958)

Political philosophy · trans. Original English (1958)

The life of man: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Thomas Hobbes · Leviathan XIII

Social Contract · trans. Original English (1651)

Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.

John Stuart Mill · On Liberty, Chapter I

Liberalism · trans. Original English (1859)

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied.

John Stuart Mill · Utilitarianism, Chapter II

Utilitarianism · trans. Original English (1863)

Truth happens to an idea.

William James · Pragmatism, Lecture VI

Pragmatism · trans. Original English (1907)

Education is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.

John Dewey · My Pedagogic Creed (1897)

Pragmatism · trans. Original English (1897)

I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves.

Mary Wollstonecraft · A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Chapter IV

Feminism · trans. Original English (1792)

To learn and at due times to repeat what one has learnt, is that not after all a pleasure?

Confucius · Analects 1.1

Confucianism · trans. James Legge (1893)

It is much safer to be feared than loved, if one of the two has to be wanting.

Niccolò Machiavelli · The Prince XVII

Political Realism · trans. W. K. Marriott (1908)