Famous Quotes & Sayings

Henry David Thoreau

Simplify, simplify, simplify.

P. J. O'Rourke

A pleasant natural environment is a good - a luxury good, philosophical good, a moral goody-good, a good time for all. Whatever, we want it. If we want something, we should pay for it, with our labor or our cash. We shouldn't beg it, steal it, sit around wishing for it, or euchre the government into taking it by force.

Plato

That man is wisest who, like Socrates, realizes that his wisdom is worthless

Plato

To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed.

Plato

A state arises,as I conceive,out of the needs of mankind;no one is self-sufficing,but all of us have many wants

Plato

My good friend, you are a citizen of Athens, a city which is very great and very famous for its wisdom and power - are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul?

Plato

Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.

Plato

Until philosophers hold power, neither states nor individuals will have rest from trouble.

Plato

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all.

Plato

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

Plato

The learning and knowledge that we have,is,at the most,but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

Plato

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

Plato

Man never legislates,but destinies and accidents,happening in all sorts of ways,legislate in all sorts of ways.

Plato

There is no harm in repeating a good thing.

Plato

Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.

Plato

He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.

Plato

Cunning... is but the low mimic of wisdom.

Plato

Man is a wingless animal with two feet and flat nails.

Plato

The gods created certain kinds of beings to replenish our bodies... they are the trees and the plants and the seeds.

Plato

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

Plato

To be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.

Plato

All the gold which is under or upon the earth is not enough to give in exchange for virtue.

Plato

If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.

Plato

The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.

John Stuart Mill

The ends of scientific classification are best answered, when the objects are formed into groups respecting which a greater number of general propositions can be made, and those propositions more important, than could be made respecting any other groups into which the same things could be distributed. ... A classification thus formed is properly scientific or philosophical, and is commonly called a Natural, in contradistinction to a Technical or Artificial, classification or arrangement.

John Stuart Mill

To do as one would be done by, and to love one's neighbour as oneself, constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality

John Stuart Mill

The doctrine called Philosophical Necessity is simply this: that, given the motives which are present to an individual's mind, and given likewise the character and disposition of the individual, the manner in which he will act might be unerringly inferred: that if we knew the person thoroughly, and knew all the inducements which are acting upon him, we could foretell his conduct with as much certainty as we can predict any physical event.

James Jeans

The plain fact is that there are no conclusions. If we must state a conclusion, it would be that many of the former conclusions of the nineteenth-century science on philosophical questions are once again in the melting-pot.

James Joyce

The philosophic mind inclines always to an elaborate life--the life of Goethe or of Leonardo da Vinci; but the life of the poet isintense--the life of Blake or of Dante--taking into its centre the life that surrounds it and flinging it abroad again amid planetary music.

James Richardson

The happy and the suffering probably understand life equally well, but the sufferers may see a little more clearly how little it is that they understand.

James Russell Lowell

There is no good in arguing with the inevitable. The only argument available with an east wind is to put on your overcoat.

Friedrich Engels

Look at the Paris Commune. That was the Dictatorship of the Proletariat.

Friedrich Engels

From the first day to this, sheer greed was the driving spirit of civilization.