Best Philosophy Quotes

"It doesn't matter what you look at, it matters what you see."

"Having to experience both the good and the bad, the fact that it's temporal and that there's a limit and that it's our most valuable resource, gives life meaning."

"The universe is not just some dumb collection of molecules bouncing around in a box, but that the universe is conscious."

"Marcus Aurelius said, 'Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back.'"

"One with everything is actually a better, truer picture of what the world is like."

"Our consciousness, whether divine or mundane, is simply us surviving even better."

"First there was nothing, and then there was something. Out of sheerest emptiness, creativity emerged."

"Simplicity is indeed the truest form of sophistication."

"I've wanted to figure out why we die so fast, and in my view, I think it's cruel to have a sentient being that knows it's going to die in such a short time frame."

"How you do anything is how you do everything."

"The closest we get to final truth is when we let go of all thought completely."

"Philosophy is what gave us the desire to pursue science."

"Beauty is truth, truth is beauty...beauty's value is only in that it is an avatar of goodness, rightness."

"Enjoyment deferred, pleasure deferred, is like a big theme of most of the world's major faith traditions and philosophical traditions."

"The probability that we see reality as it is, is zero."

"Life is C between B and D. B stands for Birth, D stands for Death, and C stands for Choice."

"I think whatever resonates with truth is greatness."

"Helping ourselves and helping each other are not only the most important thing but they're the most important thing because they're the same thing."

"What goes up must come down. If there was no ceiling to the highs, there'd be no ceiling to the lows."

"We should all be both (rationalists and empiricists)."

"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how."

"Everything is so meaningless and so valueless that it goes full circle into infinite meaning, infinite value, absolute value, absolute love."

"If you're living in a democratic society that protects individual rights, you have Kant to partially thank for that."

"Kant was an intellectual badass. If brains had balls, Kant's would have been made out of steel."

"I think the most noble way to think about life is to keep all the things in balance."

"Every great philosopher that's ever come before us talks about how suffering and sacrifice lead to becoming good men."

"Gratitude is not only the greatest, but is also the parent of all the other virtues."

"When you're chasing something or you're saying you don't have it, you're like needing something. But when you become comfortable with where you are, things start to attract to you."

"Happiness is not a goal, it's actually the result of right thinking, right living, right acting. It's the byproduct."

"Happiness is just so silly; gratitude is where it's at."

"Everything is perfect all the time, there's no such thing as imperfection."

"The only thing you really have in your life is your time."

"All of that waste along the way... tells you that there is one truth to money: I have basic needs."

"We need a lot of being before you continue to do."

"Life is the C between B and D. B is Birth, D is Death, C is Choice."

"Our perception of reality is merely a veil over our own ideals and hunger to understand this world."

"Consciousness is not all, is not everything. There are no things for consciousness to be the all of. There is just consciousness, just this clear water of unmixed consciousness that never gets mixed with anything other than itself."

"The big conversation is a series of shows exploring faith, science, philosophy, and what it means to be human."

"The fundamental hallmark of belief is how you act, not what you say about what you think you think."

"The individual is sovereign in relationship to the state, which is a remarkable idea and one that's fundamentally religious."

"We seek a meaning that's deep enough to sustain us through tragedy."

"Aristotle claimed happiness was the ultimate purpose of life."

"If something is not consistent, it is meaningless."

"Pain is inevitable but suffering is optional."

"Life is precious; well, if it's eternal, how freaking precious can it be? There's an infinite supply."

"Nothing real can be threatened, and nothing unreal exists."

"What's more important, the perception of how we see a thing or what that thing really is?"

"What does becoming a more developed human being fundamentally mean? It's a philosophic, spiritual, religious, existential question."

"It's not accessibility inclusion; it's a philosophy. Accessibility is a mindset."

"Whatever you think, you become. You are your thoughts."

"Truth just is. It's pure isness. It's got nowhere else to go because it's the only thing that there is."

"The formula becomes: neither seek nor avoid."

"The only way that you can actually discover the meaning of life is to ask the right questions."

"Success is not a destination; it is a journey."

"See, zest in life is not optional; this is essential for living a good life."

"Love is all that is, has been, and ever can be. Love is all possibility, all potential."

"The answer to evil is not more evil. What you fight, you become. It's love."

"Consciousness is a fascinating but elusive phenomenon: it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written on it."

"Existence and awareness of existence are inseparable."

"Truth is non-dual; truth is the unification of all dualities."

"Truth is consciousness, truth is the whole universe, truth is God, truth is love."

"Truth is life and death; truth is the only thing there is and could ever be."

"Truth is self-awareness, self-illuminating, self-knowing, and self-evident."

"It was here that Heraclitus first articulated the idea of the logos as the principle and structure underlying reality itself."

"We can't be automated deterministic machines because the future is indeterminate."

"Philosophy is very, very interesting. I think it should be a required class for everybody, just the idea behind like critical thinking and everything is so, so important."

"Why not enjoy your life? You only live once."

"The outer world is a reflection of the inner world, and all is mind."

"The journey is really all that we have at the end of the day."

"Karma, in its essence, is no different from... every action has an equal and opposite reaction."

"Nothing is immutable. Everything that is exists only in relation to everything it isn't. There is no constant, there is no center."

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts."

"I don't believe in the idea that you need to suffer in order to grow."

"Wisdom doesn't have a passport. It's a global trait."

"You are neither the molecule nor the thought; you are the source of both."

"Maybe there is no ultimate limit and that maybe this infinite regress is not really a problem but is actually a feature of reality."

"Everything in our universe is infinitely interconnected."

"Infinity by its very nature must contain all finitities."

"All people dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous, for they may act on their dreams with open eyes, to make them possible."

"The complications, sophistication of the universe... this can never be out of nothing. This has to be some sort of a creator."

"Perhaps it's time to think a little less about getting things done and a little more about getting things right."

"Life before death, strength before weakness, journey before destination."

"Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend." - Bruce Lee

"Are we living in a simulation? The answer is yes, and it's powered by love."

"The journey is far more important than the destination."

"Meditating people always want to do meditating. Meditating is the opposite of doing something. You're stopping."

"The Buddha taught the middle way, letting go, renouncing, giving up."

"Our life is shaped by our mind, for we become what we think."

"If there wasn't life out there, that would be an awful waste of space."

"The whole philosophy of time management is kind of based around this idea of intentionality and then time blocking."

"The good death only comes after a good life."

"And what is the foot if not the hand of the leg?"

"You have no enemies; it's such a powerful philosophy."

"Romanticize your life, what else are we here for?"

"Balance is the key to everything in the universe."

"Everything is about to balance of opposites."

"What is reality? Wow, that's one hell of a question. That's the deepest question you're ever gonna ask in life."

"Consciousness is basically subjective experience."

"Consciousness is the thing that makes life meaningful."

"Materialism is a beautiful and compelling view of the world, but to account for consciousness, we have to go beyond the resources it provides."

"We are living in dark times... There's so much suffering, and disease, and death. What is the role of spirituality and philosophy at a time like this?... This is the time when these questions become most important."

"Physics is the study of the structure of consciousness. The stuff of the world is mind-stuff."

"Perfection isn’t achieved when there’s nothing left to add, but when there’s nothing left to take away."

"Whether or not we'll be able to validate the idea that there is a soul is always going to be an open question."

"Everything starts with consciousness; consciousness is the ground of all being."

"One of the great mysteries is contemplating consciousness, just as fun as the idea of black holes or the beginning of the universe."

"Reality is love. That's the highest thing I've realized. I think that's the highest thing you can realize."

"All the schools of Indian philosophy were more or less interested in consciousness and self. The focus was how do you overcome suffering... how to attain lasting, profound peace and joy."

"The separate self is just an imaginary limit superimposed on the true and only self of infinite consciousness."

"Consciousness is not made of any of the forms that it assumes, any more than a screen is made out of any of the objects that appear in the movie."

"You are the awareness that is aware of all experiences."

"It is consciousness alone which appears as everything. 'I alone am all this,' the Gyani will say."

"Underlying all the varied approaches in religion, in philosophy, and spirituality there's one grand underlying truth, a perennial truth."

"Nothing is more important than consciousness."

"It's not about how it might affect us; we should try to be on the side of truth."

"A time to believe something is when there's sufficient evidence for it."

"If you're not sure, you should keep investigating."

"Matter is not that which creates consciousness; it is that which limits consciousness."

"He who claims that he knows does not know; he who knows that it cannot be known, truly knows."

"All these are mirages and dreams which come. Enjoy them when they come and go, don't try to hold on."

"Conscious experience is not something that brains do; brains are something that consciousness makes up."

"Desiring what, and for whose sake, would that person continue to suffer?"

"In the eyes of the Machine God, there is no greater sin than that of ignorance."

"But if we hope for a good outcome after first contact, perhaps we need to be the kind of aliens we wish to meet."

"Rather than choosing violence and war, perhaps we need to consider cooperation and altruism, no matter how difficult it might be to do, or how strange our neighbours might be to us."

"Ikigai shows it's the Japanese Philosophy for creating your purpose and a way of movement in your life."

"A problem can never be solved from the same state of consciousness in which it arised."

"How many realities are there in this universe? If it is one without a second, then you have Advaita. Well, it literally means non-dual, not two."

"For there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so."

"This language, the seeing oneself, the self in all beings and all beings in the self, this expresses the highest realization in Advaita Vedanta."

"To seek ultimate reality is to follow explanations until explanations end. And when explanations end, what remains? I'm looking for what remains."

"Consciousness is not a system of thought. It is what gives rise to all systems of thought."

"We have one window on reality, and consciousness is it."

"If no, ask is consciousness the only non-reducible thing? If yes, then consciousness is ultimate reality."

"Happiness is our nature, happiness is what we are."

"If you understand that all life is the same energy of consciousness expressing in different ways, then you have a beginning."

"Consciousness is like the sun. It is always on. Deep sleep is not the absence of awareness; it is the awareness of absence."

"The greatest leadership in the world is to become a servant."

"Consciousness only. The entire universe is nothing but consciousness."

"You believe that consciousness is in some fundamental sense non-computational."

"The light of consciousness is the light of the lights."

"Freedom is the right of all sentient beings."

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind."

"His analysis of hierarchical behavior in chimpanzees and bonobos is revolutionary not only biologically but also philosophically."

"Consciousness only exists insofar as it's experienced. The qualitative experiential subjective character of consciousness is the defining feature of consciousness."

"The infamous hard problem of consciousness is to explain how something like consciousness could arise at all in a material universe."

"Even in principle, how could we ever know if we were in a simulation?"

"The Chandogya Upanishad says there is no true happiness in the limited."

"Brahma Satyam Jagat Mithya. Brahman is real, the world is an appearance."

"The notion of freedom that matters is the engineering notion of freedom, the notion of degrees of freedom." - Daniel Dennett

"I'm a libertarian in this respect, which means in exactly the same situation, at least two different alternative futures are possible."

"Reality is infinity. Reality is God. Reality is love. Reality is consciousness."

"Information exists; it's not in a special medium. It always has to be in some physical medium, but you really have to consider information in your theory." - Daniel Dennett

"The consciousness that we all enjoy is not what we thought it was; it's a way of being in the world, being knowledgeable, adroit, and adept." - Daniel Dennett

"Consciousness, or mind, is the best known, most immediately known, and probably ontologically prior to anything else." - Keith Ward

"I experience directly my own consciousness, and that's something additional to any physical description of what's happening." - Keith Ward

"Purposeless processes gradually create purpose." - Daniel Dennett

"The obligation to seek goodness is a fact about the universe." - Keith Ward

"Learning how to love the world and oneself is the only work in the universe of any value."

"A merry life and a short one. That's my motto."

"Magic is acting out of common sense... it is a mental operation that explodes the truth of reality."

"Truth and honesty are not merely things that you do for the benefit of others. Truth is important because truth is what everything is and the only thing that there is."

"Detachment is not about detaching from the world; it's actually about detaching from yourself."

"Stoicism, the philosophy, is popular with Marcus Aurelius, the emperor of Rome, Cato, one of the great Senators of Rome, Epictetus, a slave. It's a philosophy for doers in a world that is chaotic and unfair and unpredictable, and they're trying to get the best out of themselves and the world around them."

"The fundamental question is why is there something rather than nothing."

"This is the way of matter, this is the way of life, we're all embedded in this microverse of interconnectivity."

"Existence. We all exist, we have always existed, we will forever exist."

"Questions like 'What is consciousness?' and 'Who has consciousness?' have a deep impact on ethics and politics, on law, and on the moral choices we make every day."

"Intelligence and consciousness are very different things; intelligence is the ability to solve problems, consciousness is the ability to feel things like pain, pleasure, love, and hate."

"Philosophy is one of the sciences, indeed the science of sciences."

"Philosophy was anything you could study; everything in the realm of study was a type of philosophy."

"Philosophy is that in-between substance, that thing that can actually connect both science and religion."

"Logic and philosophical methods...are the methods with which philosophy can connect these various disciplines."

"Socrates believed that dialogue was a much more effective way to think and do philosophy, which is a system we now know as the Socratic method."

"Philosophy, from the Greek word philosophia, literally means love of wisdom."

"Stoicism is probably one of the most significant philosophies in terms of actually impacting my life."

"Philosophy, the glue that holds all of the rest of academia together."

"Knowledge is generally considered by philosophers to be true justified belief."

"Every single one of us has a philosophy, an irreducible force that drives our thinking and actions, dictating our outcomes and our sense of life."

"Considering and learning about our philosophy could change our lives, and taken to its furthest conclusion, could change the world."

"Philosophy is the most practical thing a human being can hope to embrace."

"It's through our philosophical explorations that we can identify contradictions in our own life, resolve them, and transcend current challenges."

"It's our philosophy that gives us our sense of life, and what emerges out of that is a thing called purpose."

"You have no choice about the fact that you need a philosophy. Your only choice is whether you define your philosophy by a conscious, rational, disciplined process of thought or let your subconscious accumulate a junk heap of unwarranted conclusions."

"Hatred is false because it goes against our deepest oneness."

"Derrida was...all about democracy...he's all about unconditional Hospitality."

"The surest foundation for ethics... is that we are one."

"One of the greatest attractions of Vedanta is that it does not conflict with science and reason."

"Reality is consciousness, and there is nothing but consciousness."

"The Buddha, 2,500 years ago, talked about the interconnected core rising of phenomena...nothing exists on its own."

"The Upanishad says the self is the passenger and the body is the chariot."

"It's like peeling an onion. You peel it and peel it, and you think you'll come to an essence... you find nothing."

"Between eternalism and nihilism, between Asti and Nasti, that between language is peculiarly Buddhist."

"It's educational philosophy, is why I do it."

"This is just the inevitable product of a philosophy that says we can do the most good in the world without actually really caring about other people and our obligations to them."

"Russell is exceptionally clear, and the topics he discusses in that book are very interesting, and there is one chapter at the end about the value of studying philosophy that I think is a masterpiece."

"The meditations is really a great example of this idea of philosophy as a way of life."

"Douglas Hofstadter's concept of the strange loop... is fundamental to the very structure of reality itself."

"Is there a difference between the thing and how the thing functions? Yes, there's certainly a difference."

"You cannot capture reality and encapsulate it into a formal system because reality is infinite."