“If you look for perfection, you'll never be content.”
Leo Tolstoy · Anna Karenina, 1878
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Philosophy Quotes
180 quotes on philosophy and the big questions — from the classics to the everyday.
“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”
Leo Tolstoy · War and Peace, 1869
“There is no greatness where there is no simplicity, goodness, and truth.”
Leo Tolstoy · War and Peace, 1869
“I sit on a man's back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means — except by getting off his back.”
Leo Tolstoy · What Then Must We Do?, 1886
“All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do.”
Leo Tolstoy · The Kingdom of God Is Within You, 1894
“The biggest surprise in a man's life is old age.”
Leo Tolstoy
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
Leo Tolstoy · Three Methods of Reform, 1900
“Being seen is not the same as being known. But it is often enough to make us act as though we are.”
Original
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
T. S. Eliot · Little Gidding, Four Quartets, 1942
“Do I dare disturb the universe?”
T. S. Eliot · The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, 1915
“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.”
Vladimir Nabokov · Speak, Memory, 1951
“Man is condemned to be free.”
Jean-Paul Sartre · Existentialism Is a Humanism, 1945
“The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”
Socrates · Plato, Apology
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.”
Seneca · Letters to Lucilius, Letter 2
“You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
Marcus Aurelius · Meditations
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
Friedrich Nietzsche · Twilight of the Idols, 1889
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Socrates · Plato, Apology, 399 BC
