1.
Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.
Sigmund Freud
Many individuals are reluctant to embrace liberty as it necessitates accountability, and the majority of people dread taking on obligations.
2.
The world is not the most pleasant place.
Eventually,
your parents leave you and nobody is going to go out of their way to protect you unconditionally.
You need to learn to stand up for yourself and what you believe and sometimes,
pardon my language,
kick some ass.
Queen Elizabeth II
3.
The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.
Niccolo Machiavelli
Evaluate the intellect of a leader by scrutinizing the people he keeps in his company.
4.
Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.
Aristotle
Regimes deteriorate into autocracies and autocracies degenerate into tyrannies.
5.
De omnibus dubitandum
Rene Descartes
'Everything must be questioned.'
6.
Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.
Rene Descartes
Break down each obstacle into as many manageable components as is feasible and necessary to overcome it.
7.
To make a revolution, people must not only struggle against existing institutions. They must make a philosophical/ spiritual leap and become more 'human' human beings. In order to change/ transform the world, they must change/ transform themselves.
Grace Lee Boggs
8.
Life is life - whether in a cat, or dog or man. There is no difference there between a cat or a man. The idea of difference is a human conception for man's own advantage.
Sri Aurobindo
Existence is existence - no distinction between a creature of the land, sea, or air. Any notion of disparity is solely derived from humanity to serve its own interests.
9.
The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.
Karl Marx
10.
The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.
Martin Heidegger
"It is profoundly unsettling that in these times of great introspection, we are still failing to consider the ramifications of our actions."
11.
The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
Aristotle
The purpose of art is to portray not the superficial features of things, but their intrinsic meaning.
12.
There is no difference between the pain of humans and the pain of other living beings, since the love and tenderness of the mother for the young are not produced by reasoning, but by feeling, and this faculty exists not only in humans but in most living beings.
Maimonides
13.
How can we live in harmony? First we need to know we are all madly in love with the same God.
Thomas Aquinas
"We can find tranquility if we all recognize our devotion to the same divine being."
14.
Omnia apud me mathematica fiunt.
Rene Descartes
'Everything I do is based on mathematics.'
15.
From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.
Karl Marx
"Provide based on capacity, receive based on requirement."
16.
If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.
Baruch Spinoza
If you want the current to contrast with the preceding, investigate the preceding.
17.
To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
To be unaware of the past is to remain perpetually youthful.
18.
He who learns but does not think, is lost. He who thinks but does not learn is in great danger.
Confucius
One who assimilates but does not contemplate is doomed. He who muses but does not assimilate is in severe jeopardy.
19.
Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
Immanuel Kant
Knowledge without practice is futile, but theory without application is mere mental exercise.
20.
The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.
Aristotle
The most egregious form of disparity is to attempt to equate disparate entities.
21.
The comfort of the rich depends upon an abundant supply of the poor.
Voltaire
The affluent rely upon a plentiful number of the underprivileged.
22.
Nothing is more surprising than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few.
David Hume
'It is remarkable how easily the multitudes can be guided by a select few.'
23.
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.
Alexander H. Stephens
24.
It should not be believed that all beings exist for the sake of the existence of man. On the contrary, all the other beings too have been intended for their own sakes and not for the sake of anything else.
Maimonides
25.
Beauty in things exists in the mind which contemplates them.
David Hume
Aesthetics in objects is perceived through the eyes that behold them.
26.
Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back.
Plato
Every heart hums a melody, unfinished, until another heart echoes in response.
27.
Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.
Martin Heidegger
Every individual is born distinct and dies as a singular being.
28.
There is frequently more to be learned from the unexpected questions of a child than the discourses of men.
John Locke
'Often, the unexpected queries of a young one can yield more insight than the lengthy words of adults.'
29.
The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.
Karl Marx
The initial requirement for the contentment of the populace is the elimination of faith.
30.
Any man can make mistakes,
but only an idiot persists in his error.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
'Any person can blunder, but only a fool persists in their misstep.'
31.
Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.
Immanuel Kant
I am in awe of the celestial expanse above me and the internal code of conduct within me.
32.
Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.
Marcus Aurelius
Everything that occurs transpires according to a preordained design, and if you pay close attention, you will notice this is the case.
33.
Curiosity is the lust of the mind.
Thomas Hobbes
Inquisitiveness is the craving of the intellect.
34.
I have looked into most philosophical systems and I have seen that none will work without God.
James Clerk Maxwell
35.
Learning to live ought to mean learning to die - to acknowledge, to accept, an absolute mortality - without positive outcome,or resurrection, or redemption, for oneself or for anyone else. That has been the old philosophical injunction since Plato: to be a philosopher is to learn how to die.
Jacques Derrida
37.
The ignorant man is not free, because what confronts him is an alien world, something outside him and in the offing, on which he depends, without his having made this foreign world for himself and therefore without being at home in it by himself as in something his own. The impulse of curiosity, the pressure for knowledge, from the lowest level up to the highest rung of philosophical insight arises only from the struggle to cancel this situation of unfreedom and to make the world one's own in one's ideas and thought.
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
38.
Eventually, Aristotle appeared among the Greeks. He improved the methods of logic and systematized its problems and details. He assigned to logic its proper place as the first philosophical discipline and the introduction to philosophy. Therefore he is called the First Teacher.
Ibn Khaldun
39.
The person who has lived the most is not the one with the most years but the one with the richest experiences.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
40.
The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property.
Karl Marx
41.
He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.
Marcus Aurelius
42.
Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.
Plato
43.
If you care enough for a result, you will most certainly attain it.
William James
45.
Social progress can be measured exactly by the social position of the fair sex.
Karl Marx
46.
The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.
Baruch Spinoza
48.
Common sense is not something rigid and stationary, but is in continuous transformation, becoming enriched with scientific notions and philosophical opinions that have entered into common circulation. 'Common sense' is the folklore of philosophy and always stands midway between folklore proper (folklore as it is normally understood) and the philosophy, science, and economics of the scientists. Common sense creates the folklore of the future, a relatively rigidified phase of popular knowledge in a given time and place.
Antonio Gramsci