philosophy Quotes

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.

Be the change that you wish to see in the world.

I don't believe you have to be better than everybody else. I believe you have to be better than you ever thought you could be.

If you want to conquer fear, don't sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

The more man meditates upon good thoughts, the better will be his world and the world at large.

We live in deeds, not years: In thoughts not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial. We should count time by heart throbs. He most lives Who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

Every man who is high up loves to think that he has done it all himself; and the wife smiles, and lets it go at that.

I used to think that being nice to people and feeling nice was loving people. Now I know it isn't. Love is the most immense unselfishness and it is so big I've never touched it.

If you deny childhood, you deny life. They can't speak up for themselves so we must. It's like, how do we define love, It's a very, very deep feeling, but It's I think the most important force of life.

What is Love? It's silence when your words would hurt, It's patience when your neighbor's curt, It's defense when the scandal flows, It's thoughtfulness for another's woes, It's promptness when stern duty calls, It's courage when misfortune falls.

It is by not always thinking of yourself, if you can manage it, that you might somehow be happy. Until you make room in your life for someone as important to you as yourself, you will always be searching and lost . .

Last time I tried to make love to my wife nothing happened, so I said to her, 'What's the matter, you can't think of anybody either?'

The more I think about it, the more I realize there is nothing more artistic that to love others.

It requires doing not just saying and thinking. The test is in what one does, how one acts, for love is conveyed in word and deed.

Romance, like the rabbit at the dog track, is the elusive, fake, and never attained reward which, for the benefit and amusement of our masters, keeps us running and thinking in safe circles.

People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree.

I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

I want it said of me by those who knew me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

The great successful men of the world have used their imagination they think ahead and create their mental picture in all its details, filling in here, adding a little there, altering this a bit and that a bit, but steadily building - steadily building.

Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. You are thinking of failure as the enemy of success. But it isn't at all. You can be discouraged by failure or you can learn from it, So go ahead and make mistakes. Make all you can. Because remember that's where you will find success.

. . . You must do the thing you think you cannot do.

. . . He had by now divested himself of schoolboy attitudes. He was unburdened by the desire to be a martyr or a hero. Any thoughts in that direction, Belgica effectively had quashed. Heroism in the corrupt sense of the age almost by definition, meant wanton self-sacrifice and bungling. For neither had he any taste. He wanted rational attainment; victory, but not at any price. No point upon the globe was worth the cost of a single life.

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

What is the best thing for a stream? It is to keep moving. If it stops, it stagnates. So the best thing for a man is that which keeps the currents going - the physical, the moral, and the intellectual currents. Hence the secret of happiness is something to do; some congenial work. Take away the occupation of all men, and what a wretched world it would be! Few persons realize how much of their happiness is dependent upon their work, upon the fact that they are kept busy and not left to feed upon themselves. Happiness comes most to persons who seek her least, and think least about it. It is not an object to be sought; it is a state to be induced. It must follow and not lead. It must overtake you, and not you overtake it. How important is health to happiness, yet the best promoter of health is something to do. Blessed is the man who has some congenial work, some occupation in which he can put his heart, and which affords a complete outlet to all the forces there are in him.

Remember happiness doesn't depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.

We begin from the recognition that all beings cherish happiness and do not want suffering. It then becomes both morally wrong and pragmatically unwise to pursue only one's own happiness oblivious to the feelings and aspirations of all others who surround us as members of the same human family. The wiser course is to think of others when pursuing our own happiness.

The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts.

Be unselfish. That is the first and final commandment for those who would be useful and happy in their usefulness. If you think of yourself only you cannot develop because you are choking the source of development, which is spiritual expansion through thought for others.

So I have loitered my life away, reading books, looking at pictures, going to plays, hearing, thinking, writing on what pleased me best. I have wanted only one thing to make me happy, but wanting that have wanted everything.

Happiness comes of the capacity to feel deeply, to enjoy simply, to think freely, to risk life, to be needed.

One is never so happy or so unhappy as one thinks.

The belief that youth is the happiest time of life is founded on fallacy. The happiest person is the person who thinks the most interesting thoughts, and we grow happier as we grow older.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts....take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality; man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true.

Mysterious power, whence hope ethereal springs! Sweet heavenly relic of eternal things! Inspiring oft deep thoughts of things divine: The past, the present, and the future time. Thy reminiscences transport the soul To memory's Paradise , its future goal.

Toil, feel, think, hope; you will be sure to dream enough before you die, without arranging for it.

The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, but not arrogant; have humor, but without folly.

It's not always easy to do the right thing. But, doing the right thing makes you strong, it builds character, it forces you to make decisions based upon your beliefs and not what other people think. In life, and in business, you have to stand for what you believe in and sometimes you have to stand alone. But, what makes you a leader is having the courage of your convictions.

The prizes go to those who meet emergencies successfully. And the way to meet emergencies is to do each daily task the best we can; to act as though the eye of opportunity were always upon us. In the hundred-yard race the winner doesn't cross the tape line a dozen strides ahead of the field. He wins by inches. So we find it in ordinary business life. The big things that come our way are seldom the result of long thought or careful planning, but rather they are the fruit of seed planted in the daily routine of our work.

I am not one of those who think that coming in second or third is winning.

You leave old habits behind by starting out with the thought, 'I release the need for this in my life'.

Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny.

1. Be Proactive. 2. Begin with the end in mind. 3. Put first things first. 4. Think win win. 5. Seek first to understand . . . then to be understood. 6. Synergize. 7. Sharpen the saw.

We are what we think; as we desire so do we become! By our thoughts, desires, and habits, we either ascend to the full divine dignity of our nature, or we descend to suffer and learn.

In one sense the whole process of development consists of the formation of habits; for knowledge itself, and the powers of thought, as well as the higher elements in the will, all depend upon the establishment of fixed ways of reacting to given stimuli. Consequently, the general laws of habituation underlie the whole of education. But the term habit is more commonly restricted to those established reactions that act with little or no participation of consciousness, or, in other words, mechanically or automatically. Such habits as these begin to form very early, and constitute a kind of supporting framework for the higher elements of character.

I realized that far beyond the possibilities of bodily thought there were in myself forces, powers and knowledge far transcending all that the body can ever perceive or imagine in its loftiest flights.

It isn't what you know that counts, It's what you think of in time.

Only as you do know yourself can your brain serve you as a sharp and efficient tool. Know your failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see. Know also when you actually have thought through to the nature of the thing with which you are dealing and when you are not thinking at all.

To know oneself, one should assert oneself. Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We continue to shape our personality all our life.

Nurture your mind with great thoughts, for you will never go any higher than you think.

Knowledge of our duties is the most essential part of the philosophy of life. If you escape duty you avoid action. The world demands results.

Thought is the wind, knowledge the sail, and mankind the vessel.

He who thinks he can find in himself the means of doing without others is much mistaken; but he who thinks that others cannot do without him is still more mistaken.

Readers are plentiful; thinkers are rare.

Read every day something no one else is reading. Think every day something no one else is thinking. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.

No matter how much we learn, there is always more knowledge to be gained. In this connection I am reminded of a short poem that has been in my mind over the years. It reads as follow: I used to think I knew I knew. But now I must confess. The more I know I know I know I know I know the less.

No matter how vast your knowledge or how modest, it is your own mind that has to acquire it. It is only with your own knowledge that you can deal. It is only your own knowledge that you can claim to possess or ask others to consider. Your mind is your only judge of truth and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal. Nothing but a man's mind can perform that complex, delicate, crucial process of identification which is thinking. Nothing can direct the process but his own judgment. Nothing can direct his judgment but his moral integrity.

Whatever is expressed is impressed. Whatever you say to yourself, with emotion, generates thoughts, ideas and behaviors consistent with those words.

Our best friends and our worst enemies are our thoughts. A thought can do us more good than a doctor or banker or a faithful friend. It can also do us more harm than a brick.

Nothing of importance is ever achieved without discipline. I feel myself sometimes not wholly in sympathy with some modern educational theorists, because I think that they underestimate the part that discipline plays. But the discipline you have in your life should be one determined by your own desires and your own needs, not put upon you by society or authority.

Hands untrained in the use of tools destroy what they want to build. It takes skill to use tools to achieve the result desired, whether it's tearing down an old house or building a new one. Skepticism is a tool serving both purposes. But it must be used by a trained mind, a mind capable of disciplined thinking.

I do not think there is any other quality so essential to success of any kind as the quality of perseverance. It overcomes almost everything, even nature.

A wise man should consider that health is the greatest of human blessings, and learn how by his own thought to derive benefit from his illnesses.

Nine-tenths of our sickness can be prevented by right thinking plus right hygiene, nine-tenths of it!?

Die when I may, I want it said by those who knew me best that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow.

Don't accept that others know you better than yourself? Work joyfully and peacefully, knowing that right thoughts and right efforts will inevitably bring about right results.

Keep your thinking right And your business will be right.

Reputation is what the world thinks a man is; character is what he really is.

Such as are thy habitual thoughts, such also will be the character of thy soul for the soul is dyed by the thoughts. Dye it then, with a continuous series of such thoughts as these that where a man can live, there if he will, he can also live well.

Thought creates character.

Sad is the day for any man when he becomes absolutely satisfied with the life he is living, the thoughts that he is thinking and the deeds that he is doing; when there ceases to be forever beating at the doors of his soul a desire to do something larger which he seeks and knows he was meant and intended to do.

Even as water carves monuments of stone, so do our thoughts shape our character.

Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.

Character isn't inherited. One builds it daily by the way one thinks and acts, thought by thought, action by action. If one lets fear or hate or anger take possession of the mind, they become self-forged chains.

Essential characteristics of a gentleman: The will to put himself in the place of others; the horror of forcing others into positions from which he would himself recoil; the power to do what seems to him to be right, without considering what others may say or think.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than by what they think laughable.

Every man has three characters: That which he exhibits, that which he has, and that which he thinks he has.

Character is like a tree and reputation its shadow. The shadow is what we think it is; the tree is the real thing.

Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.

Passing the veil does not alter a man; it certainly takes him from the eyes of flesh, but the capacity, the intelligence, the thinking powers, are all alive and quick; and if they hear the Gospel they will be glad, and the promises are made to them, and they will rejoice in them.

Sow a Thought, and you reap an Act; Sow an Act, and you reap a Habit; Sow a Habit, and you reap a Character; Sow a Character, and you reap a Destiny.

A certain bygone philosophy - which certainly must have quite forgotten all about the real child - used to speak of the child's nature as a tabula rasa, or 'blank page,' upon which experience and training might write what they pleased. As a matter of fact, the child's nature at birth, like that of a calf or a chick, is pretty well scribbled over by the experience of its ancestors. It is far from being blank, for as soon as the little organism comes into the world, it begins to do certain things and do them with much zeal and determination, as every one knows who knows real children.

Be more concerned with your character than with your reputation. Your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are.

What we think or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only thing of consequence is what we do.

Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem more afraid of life than death.

Life is often compared to a marathon, but I think it is more like being a sprinter; long stretches of hard work punctuated by brief moments in which we are given the opportunity to perform at our best.

While we stop to think, we often miss our opportunity.

You can do what you have to do, and sometimes you can do it even better than you think you can.

I thought: If I was lucky enough to live, I'd change, myself - I realized I could have a new life-new energy, new endurance, and feel better about myself.

The Bhagavad-Gita is an empire of thought and in its philosophical teachings Krishna has all the attributes of the full-fledged montheistic deity and at the same time the attributes of the Upanisadic absolute.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts.

You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.

The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.

Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one.

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

It is not death that a man should fear, but he should fear never beginning to live.

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

The best revenge is not to be like your enemy.

Accept the things to which fate binds you, and love the people with whom fate brings you together, and do so with all your heart.

Never esteem anything as of advantage to you that will make you break your word or lose your self-respect.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?

People learn, early in their lives, what is their reason for being.

Tell your heart that the fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself.

We are all, in private life, decent people; and we are all, in public life, savage people.

The natural loves are not all selfless. Even the best of them is partly self-regarding.

We do not want merely to see beauty, though that is bad enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words: to be united with the beauty we see.