Top 40 Philosophical Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

2. “No great thing is created suddenly.”

— Epictetus

Also featured in: Stoic Philosophy Quotes

3. “To live alone is the fate of all great souls.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Also featured in: Loneliness Quotes, Fate Quotes

4. “Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.”

— Immanuel Kant

Also featured in: Intuition Quotes

5. “To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.”

— Marcus Aurelius

Also featured in: Math Quotes, Wise Quotes

6. “The world turns aside to let any man pass who knows where he is going.”

— Epictetus

Also featured in: Stoic Philosophy Quotes

7. “The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.”

— Aristotle

8. “He who lives in harmony with himself lives in harmony with the universe.”

— Marcus Aurelius

Also featured in: Peace Quotes

9. “If you wish to be a writer, write.”

— Epictetus

Also featured in: Stoic Philosophy Quotes

10. “Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.”

— Sigmund Freud

Also featured in: Freedom Quotes

11. “Confine yourself to the present.”

— Marcus Aurelius

Also featured in: Mindfulness Quotes

12. “Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.”

— Immanuel Kant

Also featured in: Science Quotes, Fear Quotes

13. “Man is condemned to be free.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

14. “The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.”

— Marcus Aurelius

Also featured in: Art Quotes

15. “Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Also featured in: Greatness Quotes

16. “Do you wish to rise? Begin by descending. You plan a tower that will pierce the clouds? Lay first the foundation of humility.”

— Saint Augustine

Also featured in: Humility Quotes

17. “If you remember me, then I don’t care if everyone else forgets.”

— Haruki Murakami

18. “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

Also featured in: Quotes About Veganism

19. “The thinking person must oppose all cruel customs, no matter how deeply rooted in tradition and surrounded by a halo. When we have a choice, we must avoid bringing torment and injury into the life of another.”

— Albert Schweitzer

Also featured in: Quotes About Veganism

20. “The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.”

— Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Also featured in: Art Quotes

21. “Well begun is half done.”

— Aristotle

22. “Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.”

— Immanuel Kant

23. “The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.”

— Confucius

Also featured in: Quotes About Money

24. “Each day provides its own gifts.”

— Marcus Aurelius

Also featured in: Gratitude Quotes

25. “There is always some madness in love. But there is also always some reason in madness.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

26. “The past is past, and the future is yet to come. That means the future is in your hands – the future entirely depends on the present. That realization gives you a great responsibility.”

— Dalai Lama XIV

Also featured in: Responsibility Quotes

27. “The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

Also featured in: Wisdom Quotes, Communication Quotes

28. “The assumption that animals are without rights, and the illusion that our treatment of them has no moral significance, is a positively outrageous example of Western crudity and barbarity. Universal compassion is the only guarantee of morality.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Also featured in: Quotes About Veganism

29. “Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.”

— Erich Fromm

30. “Alice came to a fork in the road. ‘Which road do I take?’ she asked. ‘Where do you want to go?’ responded the Cheshire Cat. ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the Cat, ’it doesn’t matter.”

— Lewis Carroll

Also featured in: Choices Quotes

31. “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.”

— Albert Camus

Also featured in: Philosophy Quotes

32. “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language.”

— Ludwig Wittgenstein

Also featured in: Philosophy Quotes

33. “If you fall behind, run faster. Never give up, never surrender, and rise up against the odds.”

— Jesse Jackson

Also featured in: Giving Up Quotes

34. “The best things in life make you sweaty.”

— Edgar Allan Poe

Also featured in: Purpose Quotes

35. “Forgiveness is the final form of love.”

— Reinhold Niebuhr

Also featured in: Love Quotes, Forgiveness Quotes

36. “Being spiritual has nothing to do with what you believe and everything to do with your state of consciousness.”

— Eckhart Tolle

37. “No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

Also featured in: Quotes About War

38. “Punishment is justice for the unjust.”

— Saint Augustine

Also featured in: Justice Quotes

39. “Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.”

— William James

40. “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach!”

— Charles Dickens

Also featured in: Past Quotes

41. “Great minds discuss ideas. Average minds discuss events. Small minds discuss people.”

— Eleanor Roosevelt

Also featured in: Motivational Quotes, Leadership Quotes, Vision Quotes

42. “Is it better to have had a good thing and lost it, or never to have had it?”

— Charles Dickens

Also featured in: Life Quotes