70 Philosophical Quotes That Offer Profound Insights About Life

1. “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.”-Albert Einstein

2. “Without music, life would be a mistake.”-Friedrich Nietzsche

3. “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”-Elie Wiesel

4. “Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.”-Benjamin Franklin Wade

5. “How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”-Anne Frank

6. “You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts.”-Kahlil Gibran

7. “May you live every day of your life.”-Jonathan Swift

8. “Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.”-Albert Camus

9. “It is hard enough to remember my opinions, without also remembering my reasons for them!”-Friedrich Nietzsche

10. “A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”-Albert Einstein

11. “Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.”-Isaac Asimov

12. “Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.”-Benjamin Spock

13. “Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!”-Dr. Seuss

14. “Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”-Frank Zappa

15. “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.”-Elie Wiesel

16. “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science.”-Albert Einstein

17. “Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don’t we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we’re partisans of liberty, then it’s our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!”-J.R.R. Tolkien

18. “I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.”–F. Scott Fitzgerald

19. “Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.”-Douglas Adams

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

21. “When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”-Friedrich Nietzsche

22.“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”-George Bernard Shaw

23. “In the end these things matter most:How well did you love?How fully did you live?How deeply did you let go?”-Jack Kornfield

24. “Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.”-Lao Tzu

25. “You only live twice:Once when you are born and once when you look death in the face”-Ian Fleming

26. “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter”-John Keats

27.“A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.”-Gilles Deleuze

28.“If you win, you need not have to explain…If you lose, you should not be there to explain!”-Adolf Hitler

29. “A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it.”-D.H. Lawrence

30. “Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.”-Bertrand Russell

31. “What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Herein lies the key to your earthly pursuits.” ― Carl Jung

32. “When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everyone will respect you.” ― Lao Tzu

33. “Contentment is natural wealth, luxury is artificial poverty.” ― Socrates

34. “Man only likes to count his troubles; he doesn’t calculate his happiness.” ― Fyodor Dostoyevsky

35. “Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream.” ― Jack Kerouac

36. “I have the true feeling of myself only when I am unbearably unhappy.” ― Franz Kafka

37. “If you look for perfection, you’ll never be content.” ― Leo Tolstoy

38. “Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.” ― William James

39. “The notion that a human being should be constantly happy is a uniquely modern, uniquely American, uniquely destructive idea.” ― Andrew Weil

40. “The truly faithless one is the one who makes love to only a fraction of you. And denies the rest.” ― Anais Nin

41. “Love one another but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.” ― Kahlil Gibran

42. “When you love someone, you love the person as they are, and not as you’d like them to be.” — Leo Tolstoy

43. “Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.” ― Ursula K. Le Guin

44. “We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go. For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

45. “Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” ― Lao Tzu

46. “We were together. I forget the rest.” ― Walt Whitman

47. “Love is friendship set to music.” ― Jackson Pollock

48. “Intelligence is intuitive you needn’t learn to love unless you’ve been taught to fear and hate.” ― Saul Williams

49. “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” ― Kurt Vonnegut

50. “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” ― C.G. Jung

51. “We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us.” ― Joseph Campbell

52. “Become what you are.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

53. “What labels me, negates me.” ― Soren Kierkegaard

54. “What is important is to spread confusion, not eliminate it.” ― Salvador Dalí

55. “Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of all art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.” — James Joyce

56. “Art and love are the same thing: It’s the process of seeing yourself in things that are not you.” ― Chuck Klosterman

57. “Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not. ” ― Pablo Picasso

58. “Art is anything you can get away with.” ― Marshall McLuhan

59. “I don’t believe in art. I believe in artists.” ― Marcel Duchamp

60. “I’d tell you all you want and more, if the sounds I made could be what you hear.” ― David Foster Wallace

61. “If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it’s to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.” ― Jim Morrison

62. “All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.” ― Ernest Hemingway

63. “Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.” ― Allen Ginsberg

64. “Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one’s own self.” ― Franz Kafka

65. “Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly ― they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.” ― Aldous Huxley

66. “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” ― Robert Frost

67. “I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.” ― Jorge Luis Borges

68. “What I really wanted was every kind of life, and the writer’s life seemed the most inclusive.” ― Susan Sontag

69. “Words are never ‘only words’; they matter because they define the contours of what we can do.” ― Slavoj Zizek

70. “It is what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.” ― Oscar Wilde