Famous Quotes & Sayings

C. S. Lewis

The student is half afraid to meet one of the great philosophers face to face. He feels himself inadequate and thinks he will not understand him. But if he only knew, the great man, just because of his greatness, is much more intelligible than his modern commentator. The simplest student will be able to understand, if not all, yet a very great deal of what Plato said; but hardly anyone can understand some modern books on Platonism.

Julian Baggini

Since Plato, we have been considering the nature of knowledge, the meaning of meaning and the status of the physical world.

Benjamin Jowett

Plato's dialogues bear at least some similarities to the classical plays.

Bill Maher

I want you teabaggers out there to understand one thing: while you idolize the Founding Fathers and dress up like them, and smell like them, I think it's pretty clear that the Founding Fathers would have hated your guts. And what's more, you would've hated them. They were everything you despise. They studied science, read Plato, hung out in Paris and thought the Bible was mostly bulls**t.

Bjorn Lomborg

I found university a little dispiriting. I thought I would enter the great halls of Plato, but instead I entered the halls of an intellectual sausage factory. I wanted to do something not on the main course, and chose the environment.

Demetri Martin

Socrates became a trendsetter. Other philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle and Gus, quickly followed suit, dropping their last names too. And, for centuries after that there would be countless imitators including oltaire, Michelangelo, and, much later, Cher.

Denis Diderot

At an early age I sucked up the milk of Homer, Virgil, Horace, Terence, Anacreon, Plato and Euripides, diluted with that of Moses and the prophets.

Edward Gibbon

The authority of Plato and Aristotle, of Zeno and Epicurus, still reigned in the schools; and their systems, transmitted with blind deference from one generation of disciples to another, precluded every generous attempt to exercise the powers, or enlarge the limits, of the human mind.

Edward Gibbon

The knowledge that is suited to our situation and powers, the whole compass of moral, natural, and mathematical science, was neglected by the new Platonists; whilst they exhausted their strength in the verbal disputes of metaphysics, attempted to explore the secrets of the invisible world, and studied to reconcile Aristotle with Plato, on subjects of which both these philosophers were as ignorant as the rest of mankind.

Carol Roth

Men, if you are in a position of power or authority, please respectfully continue to mentor and work with talented individuals and those with promise, regardless if they are men or women.

Carol Leifer

All my other relationships with men, there was so much maneuvering and strategic decisions and stuff.

Carol Moseley Braun

It's time to take the 'Men Only' sign off the White House door.

Carol Vorderman

I have had stalkers over the years. The police deal with it but it is very scary. One man kept turning up where we filmed 'Countdown in Leeds,' which was scary. It was sad as he'd been sectioned and thought I was talking to him through the TV.

Carlos Fuentes

The women I have loved I have desired for themselves, but also because I feared myself.

Carlos Castaneda

Self importance is man's greatest enemy.

Carlos Castaneda

Man lives only to learn. And if he learns it is because it is the nature of his lot, for good or bad.

Carlos Castaneda

We are men and our lot in life is to learn and to be hurled into inconceivable new worlds.

Carlos Castaneda

The greatest flaw of human beings is to remain glued to the inventory of reason. Reason doesn't deal with man as energy. Reason deals with instruments that create energy, but it has never seriously occurred to reason that we are better than instruments: we are organisms that create energy. We are bubbles of energy.

Cesare Pavese

A consoling thought: what matters is not what we do, but the spirit in which we do it. Others suffer too; so much so that there is nothing in the world but suffering; the problem is simply to keep a clear conscience.

Isaac Marion

We are where we are, however we got here. What matters is where we go next.

Bruce Willis

It doesn't matter how many people I've killed. What matters is how I get along with the people who are still alive.

Charlie Munger

We've got great flexibility and a certain discipline in terms of not doing some foolish thing just to be active - discipline in avoiding just doing any damn thing just because you can't stand inactivity.

Dana Gioia

Once an author finishes a poem, he becomes merely another reader. I may remember what I intended to put into a text, but what matters is what a reader actually finds there which is usually something both more and less than the poet planned.

David Horowitz

In politics intentions count for nothing; actions are what matter.

Basil Bunting

All you can usually say about a poem or a picture is, 'Look at it, listen to it.' Whether you listen to a piece of music or a poem, or look at a picture or a jug or a piece of sculpture, what matters about it is not what it has in common with others of its kind, but what is singularly its own.

Edna O'Brien

What matters is the imaginative truth.

Barbara Tuchman

Above all, discard the irrelevant.