100+ Famous Philosophy Quotes That Will Make You Think

“I think, therefore I am.” – René Descartes

“Existence precedes essence.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

“To be is to be perceived.” – George Berkeley

“Being is not a predicate.” – Immanuel Kant

“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space.” – Democritus

“The only thing I know is that I know nothing.” – Socrates

“We are what we repeatedly do.” – Aristotle

“Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.” – Jean-Paul Sartre

“To exist is to have a story to tell.” – Gabriel Marcel

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” – Albert Einstein

“Life is not measured in years, but in moments that take your breath away.” – Anonymous

“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.” – Oscar Wilde

“Knowledge is power.” – Francis Bacon

“All that is known is transformed by the knower.” – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“The truth will set you free.” – Jesus Christ

“Doubt is the origin of wisdom.” – Augustine of Hippo

“We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more in imagination than in reality.” – Seneca

“There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the absence of doubt.” – Richard Feynman

“Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact.” – Marcus Aurelius

“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.” – Socrates

“Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.” – Francis Bacon

“Ignorance is never better than knowledge.” – Enrico Fermi

“The pursuit of truth is the noblest occupation of man.” – Nicolaus Copernicus

“Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, unless it agrees with your own reason.” – Buddha

“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” – Immanuel Kant

“Morality is not the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy, but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.” – Immanuel Kant

“Virtue is its own reward.” – Seneca

“An unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” – Jesus Christ

“The good of the people is the greatest law.” – Cicero

“Without civic morality, communities perish.” – Victor Hugo

“The moral arc of the universe bends toward justice.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

“It is not enough to win; others must lose.” – Gore Vidal (ironic critique)

“Ethics is nothing other than reverence for life.” – Albert Schweitzer

“Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature.” – John Locke

“Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Freedom is not having choices, but making them.” – Unknown

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” – Jean-Jacques Rousseau

“Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” – George Orwell

“With freedom comes responsibility.” – Winston Churchill

“Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else.” – John Stuart Mill

“No one is free who is not master of himself.” – Epictetus

“The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.” – Thomas Jefferson

“Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.” – Daniel J. Boorstin

“True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.” – Mortimer Adler

“Responsibility is the price of freedom.” – Elbert Hubbard

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“Freedom lies in being bold.” – Robert Frost

“Time is a created thing. To say ‘I don’t have time’ is like saying ‘I don’t want to.’” – Lao Tzu

“The future is purchased by the present.” – Samuel Johnson

“Time is the school in which we learn, time is the fire in which we burn.” – Delmore Schwartz

“Eternity is in love with the productions of time.” – William Blake

“The past has no power over the present moment.” – Eckhart Tolle

“You cannot step into the same river twice.” – Heraclitus

“Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.” – Nathaniel Hawthorne

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.” – H.P. Lovecraft (on time’s mystery)

“Time is money.” – Benjamin Franklin

“In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on.” – Robert Frost

“Time is the wisest counselor of all.” – Pericles

“The infinite is the measure of God; eternity is His time.” – Nicholas of Cusa

“Know thyself.” – Inscription at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi

“The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation.” – John Dewey

“Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” – Carl Jung

“To thine own self be true.” – William Shakespeare

“The most important thing in life is to be yourself.” – Jim Morrison

“I am because we are.” – Desmond Tutu (Ubuntu philosophy)

“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe.” – Nietzsche

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Identity is not a mask we wear; it is the truth we uncover.” – Unknown

“We invent ourselves every day.” – Tom Stoppard

“The self is a fiction constructed by memory.” – Daniel Dennett

“To find yourself, think for yourself.” – Socrates

“Wisdom begins in wonder.” – Socrates

“The wise man speaks because he has something to say; the fool because he has to say something.” – Plato

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” – Aristotle

“The fool thinks himself to be wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.” – William Shakespeare

“True wisdom comes not from knowledge, but understanding.” – Confucius

“The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.” – Socrates

“Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the lifelong attempt to acquire it.” – Albert Einstein

“He who knows not, and knows not that he knows not, is a fool—shun him.” – Arabic Proverb

“The wise man doesn't give the right answers, he poses the right questions.” – Claude Lévi-Strauss

“Wisdom is the power to see what is good and just and desirable.” – John Rawls

“The more you know, the more you realize you don't know.” – Aristotle

“Wisdom is the ability to hide one's abilities.” – François de La Rochefoucauld

“What does not kill me makes me stronger.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls.” – Khalil Gibran

“Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise.” – Pema Chödrön

“The wound is the place where the light enters you.” – Rumi

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.” – Haruki Murakami

“Adversity introduces a man to himself.” – Albert Einstein

“Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.” – Seneca

“The human spirit is stronger than anything that can happen to it.” – C.C. Scott

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.” – Victor Hugo

“To be upset over what you don't have is to waste what you do have.” – Barbara De Angelis

“Strength does not come from what you can do, but from overcoming what you once believed you couldn't.” – Rikki Rogers

“Appearances are a glimpse of the unseen.” – Parmenides

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought.” – Buddha

“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.” – Albert Einstein

“The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” – Henri Bergson

“We are prisoners of our own minds.” – Plato (Allegory of the Cave)

“The world is an illusion, but it is an illusion we must take seriously.” – Niels Bohr

“There is no reality except the one contained within us.” – Konstantin Paustovsky

“We see things not as they are, but as we are.” – Anaïs Nin

“The greatest deception men suffer is from their own opinions.” – Leonardo da Vinci

“Truth is stranger than fiction.” – Lord Byron

“Illusion is the first of all pleasures.” – Voltaire

“The real is not what appears, nor what hides itself, but what passes from one to the other.” – Jacques Lacan

“The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.” – John Lennon

“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” – Friedrich Nietzsche

“The unexamined life is not worth living.” – Socrates

“Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.” – George Bernard Shaw

“Purpose is the key to unlocking potential.” – Simon Sinek

“The meaning of life is to give life meaning.” – Viktor Frankl

“In the end, it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years.” – Abraham Lincoln

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” – Mahatma Gandhi

“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life.” – Steve Jobs

“We are here to add what we can to life, not to get what we can from life.” – Frederick B. Robinson

“Life is not measured in years, but in the moments that take your breath away.” – Maya Angelou