Top 200 Philosophy Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

— Marcus Aurelius

52. “Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that draws it. Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Joy follows a pure thought like a shadow that never leaves.”

— Buddha

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

— Immanuel Kant

54. “The question ‘Who am I?’ is not really meant to get an answer, the question ‘Who am I?’ is meant to dissolve the questioner.”

— Ramana Maharshi

55. “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

— Heraclitus

56. “Every man is guilty of all the good he did not do.”

— Voltaire

57. “The purpose of human life is to serve, and to show compassion and the will to help others.”

— Albert Schweitzer

58. “The World is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion.”

— Thomas Paine

59. “People only see what they are prepared to see.”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

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

— Immanuel Kant

61. “It’s not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it.”

— Seneca the Younger

62. “You can’t live at all unless you can live fully now.”

— Alan Watts

63. “To know that you do not know is the best. To think you know when you do not is a disease. Recognizing this disease as a disease is to be free of it.”

— Lao Tzu

64. “Life is like a play: it’s not the length, but the excellence of the acting that matters.”

— Seneca

65. “Long is the night to him who is awake; long is a mile to him who is tired; long is life to the foolish who do not know the true law.”

— Buddha

66. “The journey is what brings us happiness, not the destination.”

— Dan Millman

67. “Your task is to stand straight; not to be held straight.”

— Marcus Aurelius

68. “Become totally empty. Quiet the restlessness of the mind. Only then will you witness everything unfolding from emptiness.”

— Lao Tzu

69. “In the morning when thou risest unwillingly, let this thought be present – I am rising to the work of a human being. Why then am I dissatisfied if I am going to do the things for which I exist and for which I was brought into the world?”

— Marcus Aurelius

70. “Look well into thyself; there is a source of strength which will always spring up if thou wilt always look.”

— Marcus Aurelius

71. “It is in your power to withdraw yourself whenever you desire. Perfect tranquility within consists in the good ordering of the mind, the realm of your own.”

— Marcus Aurelius

72. “The truth is revealed by removing things that stand in its light, an art not unlike sculpture, in which the artist creates, not by building, but by hacking away.”

— Alan Watts

73. “The worst form of injustice is pretended justice.”

— Plato

74. “She does not show herself, and therefore is apparent. She does not affirm herself, and therefore is acknowledged. She does not boast and therefore has merit. She does not strive and therefore is successful. It is exactly because she does not contend, that nobody can contend with her.”

— Lao Tzu

75. “There is an art of seeing things as they are: without naming, without being caught in a network of words, without thinking interfering with perception.”

— Jiddu Krishnamurti

76. “I assess the power of a will by how much resistance, pain, torture it endures and knows how to turn to its advantage.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

77. “Not-knowing is true knowledge. Presuming to know is a disease. First realize that you are sick; then you can move toward health.”

— Lao Tzu

78. “To be always fortunate, and to pass through life with a soul that has never known sorrow, is to be ignorant of one half of nature.”

— Seneca

79. “While we are postponing, life speeds by.”

— Seneca the Younger

80. “If I am walking with two other men, each of them will serve as my teacher. I will pick out the good points of the one and imitate them, and the bad points of the other and correct them in myself.”

— Confucius

81. “Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”

— Jean-Paul Sartre

82. “No one was ever injured by the truth; but he who persists in self-deception and ignorance is injured.”

— Marcus Aurelius

83. “It is difficult to find happiness within oneself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

84. “To conquer oneself is the best and noblest victory; to be vanquished by one’s own nature is the worst and most ignoble defeat.”

— Plato

85. “There is nothing permanent except change. Nothing is permanent except change. The only constant is change. Change is the only constant. Change alone is unchanging.”

— Heraclitus

86. “Faced with what is right, to leave it undone shows a lack of courage.”

— Confucius

87. “Treat with utmost respect your power of forming opinions, for this power alone guards you against making assumptions that are contrary to nature and judgments that overthrow the rule of reason.”

— Marcus Aurelius

88. “The superior man is slow in his words and earnest in his conduct.”

— Confucius

89. “No matter what happens, it is within my power to turn it to my advantage.”

— Epictetus

90. “All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsion, habit, reason, passion, and desire.”

— Aristotle

91. “That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

92. “The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.”

— Albert Camus

93. “The perfection of moral character consists in this, in passing every day as the last, and in being neither violently excited nor torpid nor playing the hypocrite.”

— Marcus Aurelius

94. “The soul of man is immortal and imperishable.”

— Plato

95. “All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.”

— Socrates

96. “Being is only Being for Dasein.”

— Martin Heidegger

97. “Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home.”

— Martin Heidegger

98. “Pay no attention to the faults of others, things done or left undone by others. Consider only what by oneself is done or left undone.”

— Buddha

99. “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

100. “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.”

— Marcus Aurelius