Famous Quotes & Sayings

Erma Bombeck

I have a friend who lives by a three-word philosophy: Seize the Moment. Just possibly, she may be the wisest woman on this planet.

Flora Lewis

Democracy may have arisen in the West as the way of striving for the universal aspiration to dignity and freedom, but it isn't alien to the underlying concepts that infuse religion and moral philosophy everywhere.

Ferran Adria

Throughout the history of el Bulli, there have been many changes in its organisation or philosophy. This is another one of those moments. There will be risk, and freedom, and creativity. But there won't be opening hours, or reservations, or routines.

Fidel Castro

The solutions put forth by imperialism are the quintessence of simplicity...When they speak of the problems of population and birth, they are in no way moved by concepts related to the interests of the family or of society...Just when science and technology are making incredible advances in all fields, they resort to technology to suppress revolutions and ask the help of science to prevent population growth. In short, the peoples are not to make revolutions, and women are not to give birth. This sums up the philosophy of imperialism.

Fiona Apple

Let me know the way, before there's hell to pay.

Fiona Apple

I keep living this day like the next will never come.

Henry Miller

Any genuine philosophy leads to action and from action back again to wonder, to the enduring fact of mystery.

Henri Bergson

I believe that the time given to refutation in philosophy is usually time lost. Of the many attacks directed by many thinkers against each other, what now remains? Nothing, or assuredly very little. That which counts and endures is the modicum of positive truth which each contributes. The true statement is, of itself, able to displace the erroneous idea, and becomes, without our having taken the trouble of refuting anyone, the best of refutations.

Henri Bergson

I see plainly how external images influence the image that I call my body : they transmit movement to it.

Henri Bergson

The major task of the twentieth century will be to explore the unconscious, to investigate the subsoil of the mind.

Henri Bergson

There is nothing in philosophy which could not be said in everyday language.

Henri Bergson

Religion is to mysticism what popularization is to science

Henri Bergson

I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment

Henri Bergson

And I also see how this body influences external images: it gives back movement to them.

Henri Bergson

In reality, the past is preserved by itself automatically.

Henri Bergson

Intelligence is the faculty of making artificial objects, especially tools to make tools.

Henri Bergson

The motive power of democracy is love

Henri Frederic Amiel

Philosophy means the complete liberty of the mind.

Henri Frederic Amiel

Are we not all shipwrecked,...condemned to death?... However impatient our neighbours make us, however much indignation our race arouses, we are all bound together, and the companions of a chain-gang have everything to lose by mutual insults...

Henri Frederic Amiel

A microscopic phantom of the universe; this is all that we are able to be.

Henri Frederic Amiel

The philosopher is like a man fasting in the midst of universal intoxication. He alone perceives the illusion of which all creatures are the willing playthings; he is less duped than his neighbor by his own nature. He judges more sanely, he sees things as they are. It is in this that his liberty consists - in the ability to see clearly and soberly, in the power of mental record.

Henri Frederic Amiel

Philosophy starts with doubt and loves only truth.

Helen Keller

If I am happy in spite of my deprivations, if my happiness is so deep that it is a faith, so thoughtful that it becomes a philosophy of life. If, in short, I am an optimist, my testimony to the creed of optimism is worth hearing.

Helen Keller

The test of all beliefs is their practical effect in life. If it be true that optimism compels the world forward, and pessimism retards it, then it is dangerous to propagate a pessimistic philosophy.

Helen Keller

I found that of the senses, the eye is the most superficial, the ear the most arrogant, smell the most voluptuous, taste the most superstitious and fickle, touch the most profound and the most philosophical.

Helen Keller

I take happiness very seriously. It is a creed, a philosophy and an objective.

Cat Stevens

Life is a maze of doors and they all open from the side you're on. Just keep on pushing hard boy, try as you may, you're going to wind up where you started from.

George Eliot

But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.

Gottfried Leibniz

But in simple substances the influence of one monad over another is ideal only.

Gottfried Leibniz

Philosophy consists mostly of kicking up a lot of dust and then complaining that you can't see anything.

Gottfried Leibniz

We live in the best of all possible worlds

Gottfried Leibniz

There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact.

Gottfried Leibniz

Every present state of a simple substance is the natural consequence of its preceding state, in such a way that its present is big with its future.