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Political theory26 quotes
Democracy passes into despotism. — Socrates · 375 BCNo tyrant need fear till men begin to feel confident in each other. — Aristotle · 350 BCWhat I say is that "just" or "right" means nothing but what is to the interest of the stronger party. — Thrasymachus · 375 BCThe State is not "abolished", it withers away. — Friedrich Engels · 1878Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasions for it. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1531The best political community is formed by citizens of the middle class. — Aristotle · 350 BCAll 26 quotes →Human nature22 quotes
God is dead: but as the human race is constituted, there will perhaps be caves for millenniums yet, in which people will show his shadow. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1882All men by nature desire to know. — Aristotle · 322 BCMan is by nature a political animal. — Aristotle · 350 BCOut of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made. — Immanuel Kant · 1784For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes. — Francis Bacon · 1620Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasions for it. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1531All 22 quotes →Politics19 quotes
Man is by nature a political animal. — Aristotle · 350 BCDemocracy passes into despotism. — Socrates · 375 BCNo tyrant need fear till men begin to feel confident in each other. — Aristotle · 350 BCThe State is not "abolished", it withers away. — Friedrich Engels · 1878Politics makes strange bedfellows. — Charles Dudley Warner · 1870He who is to be a good ruler must have first been ruled. — Aristotle · 335 BCAll 19 quotes →The human condition17 quotes
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1762Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman-a rope over an abyss. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1883Human existence is girt round with mystery: the narrow region of our experience is a small island in the midst of a boundless sea. — John Stuart Mill · 1873Of all the animals, with which this globe is peopled, there is none towards whom nature seems, at first sight, to have exercis'd more cruelty than towards man, in the numberless wants and necessities, with which she has loaded him, and in the slender means, which she affords to the relieving these necessities. — David Hume · 1739One might perhaps say that this very thing is probable, that many things happen to men that are not probable. — AgathonAs for life, it is a battle and a sojourning in a strange land; but the fame that comes after is oblivion. — Marcus Aurelius · 180All 17 quotes →Freedom16 quotes
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1762I am condemned to be free. — Jean-Paul Sartre · 1943The basis of a democratic state is liberty. — Aristotle · 350 BCAnxiety is the dizziness of freedom. — Soren Kierkegaard · 1844A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for...is a miserable creature, who has no chance of being free. — John Stuart Mill · 1862The most perfect of all works of art is true political freedom. — Friedrich Schiller · 1794All 16 quotes →Moral theory13 quotes
What I say is that "just" or "right" means nothing but what is to the interest of the stronger party. — Thrasymachus · 375 BCThere is... Only a single categorical imperative and it is this: Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. — Immanuel Kant · 1785Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent. — Adam Smith · 1759Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1882We give to necessity the praise of virtue. — Quintilian · 95All sins are attempts to fill voids. — Simone Weil · 1943All 13 quotes →God12 quotes
God is dead: but as the human race is constituted, there will perhaps be caves for millenniums yet, in which people will show his shadow. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1882For the one thing even God cannot do is change the past. — Agathon"Where is God gone?" he called out. "I mean to tell you! We have killed him,—you and I! We are all his murderers!" — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1882This only is denied even to God,
The power to make what has been done undone. — Agathon · 350 BCGod is, or He is not. But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separates us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?... If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. — Blaise Pascal · 1662If cows and horses or lions had hands, or could draw with their hands and make things as men can, horses would have drawn horse-like gods, cows cow-like gods, and each species would have made the gods' bodies just like their own. — XenophanesAll 12 quotes →Reason12 quotes
The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of. — Blaise Pascal · 1662The last proceeding of reason is to recognize that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. — Blaise Pascal · 1662Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. — David Hume · 1739The Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience. — David Hume · 1748If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning, concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: For it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion. — David Hume · 1748Sapere aude! Have the courage to use your own reason! This is the motto of the Enlightenment. — Immanuel Kant · 1784All 12 quotes →Philosophy11 quotes
Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. — Socrates · 400 BCThe unexamined life is not worth living. — Socrates · 399 BCThere is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. — Albert Camus · 1942What is your aim in philosophy?-To show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle. — Ludwig Wittgenstein · 1953Philosophy may in no way interfere with the actual use of language; it can in the end only describe it... It leaves everything as it is. — Ludwig Wittgenstein · 1953The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. — Bertrand Russell · 1912All 11 quotes →Man and animals10 quotes
A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1532Of all wild creatures, the child is the most intractable. — Plato · 346 BCA dog cannot relate his autobiography; however eloquently he may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were honest though poor. — Bertrand Russell · 1948The animal needing something knows how much it needs, the man does not. — Democritus · 370 BCDonkeys would prefer refuse to gold. — HeraclitusHe who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must either be a beast or a god. — Aristotle · 350 BCAll 10 quotes →Nature of man10 quotes
Man is the measure of all things. — Protagoras · 420 BCI think, therefore I am. — Rene Descartes · 1637Man is a social animal. — Baruch Spinoza · 1677What a chimera then is man! What a novelty! What a monster, what a chaos, what a contradiction, what a prodigy! Judge of all things, feeble earth-worn, depository of truth, a sink of uncertainty and error, the glory and the shame of the universe. — Blaise Pascal · 1670Man is a rope stretched between the animal and the Superman-a rope over an abyss. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1883Man is only a reed, the weakest thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. — Blaise Pascal · 1662All 10 quotes →Truth10 quotes
We know the truth, not only by the reason, but by the heart. — Blaise Pascal · 1670Such truth as opposeth no man's profit nor pleasure is to all men welcome. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1878Every man is fully satisfied that there is such a thing as truth, or he would not ask any question. — Charles Sanders Peirce · 1903We have our Arts so we won't die of Truth. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1888True and False are attributes of speech, not of things. And where speech is not, there is neither Truth nor Falsehood. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651All 10 quotes →Friendship9 quotes
Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods. — Aristotle · 322 BCIf thy brother wrongs thee, remember not so much his wrong-doing, but more than ever that he is thy brother. — Epictetus · 135Friends share all things. — PythagorasHave no friends who are not of equal (moral) caliber. — Confucius · 221 BCA friend is, as it were, a second self. — Cicero · 44 BCIf all men knew what each said of the other, there would not be four friends in the world. — Blaise Pascal · 1662All 9 quotes →Government9 quotes
In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain... And the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651The State is not "abolished", it withers away. — Friedrich Engels · 1878Whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasions for it. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1531The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are well armed they have good laws. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1532Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils. — Socrates · 375 BCDuring the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called war; and such a war as is of every man against every man. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651All 9 quotes →Life9 quotes
For every thing that lives is Holy. — William Blake · 1794And life is given to none freehold, but it is leasehold for all. — Lucretius · 55 BCThe art of living is more like wrestling than dancing, for it requires that we should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected. — Marcus Aurelius · 180The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless. — Alan Watts · 1982I'll tell you a big secret mon cher. Don't wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day. — Albert Camus · 1956That life is worth living is the most necessary of assumptions and, were it not assumed, the most impossible of conclusions. — George Santayana · 1905All 9 quotes →Morality9 quotes
What I say is that "just" or "right" means nothing but what is to the interest of the stronger party. — Thrasymachus · 375 BCThe masters have been done away with; the morality of the common man has triumphed. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1887Censorship is crucial for preserving morals but useless for restoring them. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1762Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1882The end justifies the means. — Hermann Busenbaum · 1650The end cannot justify the means, for the simple and obvious reason that the means employed determine the nature of the ends produced. — Aldous Huxley · 1937All 9 quotes →Nature9 quotes
Nature abhors a vacuum. — Baruch Spinoza · 1677No bird soars too high if he soars with his own wings. — William Blake · 1793Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished. — Lao Tzu · 400 BCNature to be commanded must be obeyed. — Francis Bacon · 1620Nature does nothing without purpose or uselessly. — Aristotle · 350 BCNature never makes excellent things for mean or no uses. — John Locke · 1690All 9 quotes →Revolution9 quotes
And with the guts of the last priest
Let's wring the neck of the last king. — Denis Diderot · 1772No tyrant need fear till men begin to feel confident in each other. — Aristotle · 350 BCThe philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. — Karl Marx · 1845What is a rebel? A man who says no. — Albert Camus · 1951Every revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic. — Albert Camus · 1951Revolutions are brought about by men, by men who think as men of action and act as men of thought. — Kwame Nkrumah · 1964All 9 quotes →The soul9 quotes
The soul is in a way all existing things. — Aristotle · 350 BCThere are more disorders of the mind than of the body, and they are of a more dangerous nature. — Cicero · 45 BC’Tis very dishonourable in life, that the soul should fail and desert its duty; while the body can hold out, and sustain its part. — Marcus Aurelius · 180The soul of man is immortal and imperishable. — Socrates · 375 BCDeath is, you see, one or the other of two things: either to be dead is to be non-existent, as it were, and a dead person has no awareness of anything at all; or else, as we are told, the soul undergoes some sort of transformation, or exchanging of this present world for another. — Socrates · 399 BCIt is perfectly certain that the soul is immortal and imperishable, and our souls will actually exist in another world. — Socrates · 347 BCAll 9 quotes →Wisdom9 quotes
The unexamined life is not worth living. — Socrates · 399 BCKnow thyself. — ThalesThe road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom. — William Blake · 1793If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise. — William Blake · 1793If we are not yet able to serve man, how can we serve spiritual beings?... If we do not yet know about life how can we know about death? — Confucius · 221 BCBy first recognizing false goods, you begin to escape the burden of their influence; then afterwards true goods may gain possession of your spirit. — Boethius · 523All 9 quotes →Beliefs8 quotes
The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holder's lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately. — Bertrand Russell · 1928Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1878Crooked things may be as stiff and unflexible as straight; and men may be as positive and peremptory in error as in truth. — John Locke · 1690It is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true. — Bertrand Russell · 1928Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones. — Bertrand Russell · 1950It is wrong always, everywhere and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. — W.K. Clifford · 1877All 8 quotes →Death8 quotes
To fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. — Socrates · 399 BCWe shall die alone. — Blaise Pascal · 1662Either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another. Now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is to gain; for eternity is then only a single night. — Socrates · 339 BCDeath, therefore, the most awful of evils, is nothing to us, seeing that, when we are death is not come, and when death is come, we are not. — Epicurus · 240Death is, you see, one or the other of two things: either to be dead is to be non-existent, as it were, and a dead person has no awareness of anything at all; or else, as we are told, the soul undergoes some sort of transformation, or exchanging of this present world for another. — Socrates · 399 BCTherefore death is nothing to us, it matters not one jot, since the nature of the mind is understood to be mortal. — Lucretius · 55 BCAll 8 quotes →Ignorance8 quotes
I know that I do not know. — Socrates · 399 BCBehold! human beings living in an underground den... Like ourselves... They see only their own shadows, or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws on the opposite wall of the cave. — Socrates · 375 BCTo fear death, my friends, is only to think ourselves wise, without being wise: for it is to think that we know what we do not know. — Socrates · 399 BCMen blaspheme what they do not know. — Blaise Pascal · 1662Life is one long struggle in the dark. — Lucretius · 55 BCTo be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. — Cicero · 46 BCAll 8 quotes →Knowledge8 quotes
All men by nature desire to know. — Aristotle · 322 BCRiches, knowledge and honour are but several sorts of power. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651Let us now suppose that in the mind of each man there is an aviary of all sorts of birds-some flocking together apart from the rest, others in small groups, others solitary, flying anywhere and everywhere... We may suppose that the birds are kinds of knowledge, and that when we were children, the receptacle was empty; whenever a man has gotten and detained in the enclosure a kind of knowledge, he may be said to have learned or discovered the thing which is the subject of the knowledge: and this is to know. — Socrates · 369 BCFor knowledge itself is a power whereby he knoweth. — Francis Bacon · 1605When the people of the world all know beauty as beauty,
There arises the recognition of ugliness.
When they all know the good as good,
There arises the recognition of evil. — Lao Tzu · 400 BCKnowledge...not a rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man’s estate. — Francis Bacon · 1605All 8 quotes →Progress8 quotes
The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it. — Karl Marx · 1845Improvement makes straight roads, but the crooked roads without improvement are roads of Genius. — William Blake · 1793Few new truths have ever won their way against the resistance of established ideas save by being overstated. — Isaiah Berlin · 1976Heretics are the only bitter remedy against the entropy of human thought. — Yevgeny Zamyatin · 1923The gods did not intimate all things to men straight away, but in time, through seeking, their discoveries improve. — XenophanesLife can be wonderful as well as terrible, and we shall increasingly have the power to make life good. Since human history may be only just beginning, we can expect that future humans, or supra-humans, may achieve some great goods that we cannot now even imagine. In Nietzsche’s words, there has never been such a new dawn and clear horizon, and such an open sea. — Derek Parfit · 2017All 8 quotes →Religion8 quotes
Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world…it is the opium of the people. — Karl Marx · 1883My country is the world, and my religion is to do good. — Thomas Paine · 1792Any system of religion that has any thing in it that shocks the mind of a child cannot be a true system. — Thomas Paine · 1794Religion; which by reason of the different fancies, judgments, and passions of several men, hath grown up into ceremonies so different, that those which are used by one man, are for the most part ridiculous to another. — Thomas Hobbes · 1651Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace. — George Santayana · 1925What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak. — George Santayana · 1905All 8 quotes →Self-improvement8 quotes
We learn an art or craft by doing the things that we shall have to do when we have learnt it. — Aristotle · 322 BCWaste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one. — Marcus Aurelius · 180Is Goodness indeed so far away? If we really wanted Goodness, we should find that it was at our very side. — Confucius · 221 BCNeither by nature, then, nor contrary to nature do the virtues arise in us; rather we are adapted by nature to receive them, and are made perfect by habit. — Aristotle · 322 BCThe good of man is the active exercise of his soul's faculties in conformity with excellence or virtue... Moreover this activity must occupy a complete lifetime; for one swallow does not make spring, nor does one fine day; and similarly one day or a brief period of happiness does not make a man supremely blessed and happy. — Aristotle · 322 BCNever complain of that of which it is at all times in your power to rid yourself. — Adam Smith · 1759All 8 quotes →Existence of God7 quotes
God is dead: but as the human race is constituted, there will perhaps be caves for millenniums yet, in which people will show his shadow. — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1882"Where is God gone?" he called out. "I mean to tell you! We have killed him,—you and I! We are all his murderers!" — Friedrich Nietzsche · 1882God is, or He is not. But to which side shall we incline? Reason can decide nothing here. There is an infinite chaos which separates us. A game is being played at the extremity of this infinite distance where heads or tails will turn up. What will you wager?... If you win, you win everything; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is. — Blaise Pascal · 1662I could not possibly exist with the nature I actually have, that is, one endowed with the idea of God, unless there really is a God; the very God, I mean, of whom I have an idea. — Rene Descartes · 1641Operationally, God is beginning to resemble not a ruler but the last fading smile of a cosmic Cheshire cat. — Julian Huxley · 1927If ignorance of nature gave birth to the Gods, knowledge of nature is destined to destroy them. — Baron d'Holbach · 1770All 7 quotes →History7 quotes
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. — George Santayana · 1905To be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to be ever a child. — Cicero · 46 BCWhat experience and history teach is this-that nations and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it. — Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel · 1830History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life, and brings us tidings of antiquity. — Cicero · 55 BCHistory is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims. — Karl Marx · 1845There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. — Karl Popper · 1945All 7 quotes →Law7 quotes
The chief foundations of all states, new as well as old or composite, are good laws and good arms; and as there cannot be good laws where the state is not well armed, it follows that where they are well armed they have good laws. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1532Even when laws have been written down, they ought not always to remain unaltered. — Aristotle · 350 BCIntegrity has no need of rules. — Albert Camus · 1942There are two sorts of laws, those of absolute equity and universality, and the bizarre ones which owe their autonomy only to blindness or to the force of circumstance. The latter merely cover the man who is breaking them with a passing disgrace, which time then transfers to the judges and the nations, on whom it remains forever. — Denis Diderot · 1805A law that is not just does not seem to me to be a law. — St. Augustine · 389The people must fight in defense of the law as they would for their city wall. — HeraclitusAll 7 quotes →