Philosophy Quotes About Life
Philosophy quotes about life from Greek, Chinese, European, and American writers. They often disagree, so read each one as an answer to its own question.
How to live
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.
Our life is frittered away by detail.
A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.
Philosophical quotes about knowing yourself
He who knows other men is discerning; he who knows himself is intelligent.
The greatest thing in the world is for a man to know that he is his own.
the unexamined life is not worth living
When we see men of worth, we should think of equalling them; when we see men of a contrary character, we should turn inwards and examine ourselves.
Happiness
These thinkers disagree about what happiness is.
By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul.
Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.
The most general survey shows us that the two foes of human happiness are pain and boredom.
Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
Words of wisdom about time
So we never live, but we hope to live; and, as we are always preparing to be happy, it is inevitable we should never be so.
The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.
Ordinary people think merely how they shall spend their time; a man of any talent tries to use it.
Make use of time while it is present with you.
Change
When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.
A wise man will make more opportunities, than he finds.
People wish to be settled: only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.
Wisdom quotes about thought and truth
Learning without thought is labour lost; thought without learning is perilous.
Let us endeavour, then, to think well; this is the principle of morality.
But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.
He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.
Often misattributed
These lines are often credited to the wrong person.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
Usually credited to Aristotle. Will Durant wrote it in The Story of Philosophy (1926) as a summary of Aristotle. Source
Questions
What are good philosophy quotes about life?
Start with a question you actually have. Russell on love and knowledge, Laozi on knowing yourself, and Thoreau on the details that consume a life are good places to begin.
What does “the unexamined life is not worth living” mean?
At his trial in Plato's Apology, Socrates says a life is worth living only if you keep asking how to live it. Plato wrote the words; Socrates is his speaker.
Are philosophical quotes and Stoic quotes the same thing?
Stoicism is one school of philosophy. This page has no Stoic passages; the Stoic quotes collection covers them.
Why do these philosophy quotes sound different from versions online?
The translated passages use editions published before 1929. The translator is named beside each one so you can compare its wording with other versions.
Some quotes come from Wikiquote, used under CC BY-SA 4.0, and link to their source pages. Translations are by R. H. M. Elwes, James Legge, Charles Cotton, revised by William Carew Hazlitt, Benjamin Jowett, Robert Drew Hicks, T. Bailey Saunders, and W. F. Trotter, and are in the public domain.