Quotes about Philosophy

If virtue promises happiness, prosperity and peace, then progress in virtue is progress in each of these for to whatever point the perfection of anything brings us, progress is always an approach toward it.

We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.

It is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.

To be rich is not the end, but only a change, of worries.

The man least dependent upon the morrow goes to meet the morrow most cheerfully.

He who says either that the time for philosophy has not yet come or that it has passed is like someone who says that the time for happiness has not yet come or that it has passed.

The gods can either take away evil from the world and will not, or, being willing to do so cannot; or they neither can nor will, or lastly, they are able and willing. If they have the will to remove evil and cannot, then they are not omnipotent. If they can but will not, then they are not benevolent. If they are neither able nor willing, they are neither omnipotent nor benevolent. Lastly, if they are both able and willing to annihilate evil, why does it exist?

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.

I was not; I have been; I am not; I do not mind.

So death, the most terrifying of ills, is nothing to us, since so long as we exist, death is not with us; but when death comes, then we do not exist. It does not then concern either the living or the dead, since for the former it is not, and the latter are no more.

It is not the pretended but the real pursuit of philosophy that is needed for we do not need the appearance of good health but to enjoy it in truth.