When you want to think about some deep ideas about life and its important aspects, you think that philosophy would be helpful. For such moments we have chosen for you over 100 wise and as true philosophical quotes as possible. These are just a few of the many extraordinarily expressive and profound philosophical thoughts that dozens of philosophers have left to humanity over the last thousand years. 

Read them, they will make you remember the essence of life and the really important things. Philosophers were and are, after all, the ones who best captured ideas about life, love, time, human relationships, friendship, etc.

Philosophical quotes about happiness

Happiness is one of the favorite subjects of philosophers. It’s almost unthinkable not to have tried to define it. Below are several philosophical quotes about happiness that express the visions of many schools of thought. For some happiness means pleasure or lack of pain, for others happiness means something much deeper than that.

  1. It is a great talent and a great luck to be able to live without any ambition. I’m trying my best. But the fact that I strive for you still has an ambition. – Emil Cioran

2. Life is very simple but we insist on making it complicated. – Confucius
3. Beware of the poverty of a busy life. – Socrates
4. The years wrinkle our skin, but the lack of enthusiasm lifts our soul. – Socrates
5. While we wait for life to come, life passes. – Seneca
6. The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the past, but on building the future. – Socrates
7. It doesn’t matter what happens to you, but how you react to what happens to you. – Epictetus
8. The future influences the present as much as the past. / The future influences the present just as much as the past. – Friedrich Nietzsche
9. After many years, a man can simulate many things, but not happiness. – Jorge Luis Borges
10. Never let anyone poison your peace and then make you feel guilty because you are tired of this state. / Never let anyone poison your peace and then guilt trip you for being fed up.
11. Until the lion learns to write, each story will glorify the hunter. – African proverb
12. The irrationality of a thing is not an argument against its existence, but rather a condition of it. – Friedrich Nietzsche
13. An existence that does not hide a great madness has no value. – Unknown
14. Wisdom hides our wounds: it teaches us how to bleed secretly. – Emil Cioran
15. Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet. – Aristotle
16. It is life and it is death. And there is beauty and melancholy between the two. – Albert Camus
17. The wise man accepts pain, endures it, but does not add to it. – Marcus Aurelius

Philosophical quotes about life

What does a well-lived life mean? What does such a life look like? Some philosophers say that a life without ambition, others a life lived with intention, not in which to let ourselves be carried away by life at random, other philosophers believe that doing what you are passionate about is the key. Discover in the philosophical quotations below the essence of life according to the vision of many philosophers from antiquity to the present day.

18. Happiness is the frequent repetition of pleasure. – Arthur Schopenhauer
19. It is difficult to find happiness in yourself, but it is impossible to find it anywhere else. – Arthur Schopenhauer
20. You clearly win if you sacrifice pleasure to avoid pain. – Arthur Schopenhauer
21. The surest way not to be unhappy is not to expect to be very happy. – Arthur Schopenhauer
22. The secret of happiness is not to seek more but to develop the ability to enjoy less. – Socrates
23. Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the only desideratum of human existence. – Aristotle
24. The secret of happiness is not to seek more, but to develop the ability to enjoy less. – Socrates

Deep philosophical status, good for social media

We find some instagramable philosophical thoughts. We can identify in Socrates or Aristotle philosophical statuses that catch on social media
The answer is yes 🙂 Here are some such philosophical statuses with potential for your posts on Instagram or Facebook, in which you can find all the wisdom and depth of the philosophers quoted.

25. Contemplation is the highest form of doing something. – Socrates
26. You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star. – Nietzsche
27. If you are depressed, you live in the past. If you are anxious, you live in the future. If you are calm, you are living in the present. – Lao Tzu
28. You need very little to have a happy life. It’s all about you, the way you think. – Marcus Aurelius
29. To know yourself is the beginning of wisdom. – Aristotle
30. Our glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall. – Confucius
31. Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced.
32. Life must be understood by looking at the past, but must be lived by looking ahead. – Soren Kierkegaard
33. Anxiety is the dizziness caused by freedom. – Soren Kierkegaard
34. If you don’t know which way to go, the wind is blowing in any direction, it’s still not helpful. – Seneca
35. Throw roses into the abyss and say: thank the monster who did not swallow me alive. / Throw roses into the abyss and say: here is my thanks to the monster who didn’t succeed in swallowing me alive. – Friedrich Nietzsche
36. Man should not do the same thing twice. There is so much nonsense that you have a choice. – Bertrand Russell
37. They disturb the water to make it look deep. – Nietzsche
38. Be careful that when you fight monsters you do not become one yourself… because when you look into the abyss for a long time, the abyss also looks into you. – Nietzsche

Philosophical quotes about man and what it means to be human

The essence of man and humanity has been a search for thousands of years for philosophers from antiquity to the present day. How we define man is an essential issue if we are to understand what life we ​​should live after. That is why I have chosen for you below several philosophical quotes about man, some of the wisest and most profound. Get inspired by them and tell us which philosophical quotes you liked the most and you found yourself in them the best.

39. We all think about how to change the world, but no one thinks about how to change himself. – Lev Tolstoy
40. We are all immortal. But we must die first. – Unknown
41. Don’t act like you’re too small. You are the universe itself in ecstatic motion. / Stop acting so small. You are the universe in ecstatic motion. – Rumi
42. We do not describe the world we see. We see the world we can describe. / We do not describe the world we see. We see the world we can describe. – Rene Descartes
43. It is a royal trait to do good and to remain deaf to insults. – Antisthenes
44. How unfortunate are the consequences of anger, much more than its causes. – Marcus Aurelius
45. People define themselves by the way they lose. – Unknown
46. ​​When someone praises me, I panic: if he finds out everything I don’t know, everything I’m not
. When he condemns me, I feel calm: I’m still more than that. – Anonymous
47. I never cried, because the tears turned into thoughts. And these thoughts are not as bitter as tears
– Emil Cioran
49. People do not know how to be useless. They have paths to follow, points to reach, needs to fulfill. They do not taste imperfection, when the “purpose” of life is the ecstasy of this imperfection! But how to reveal to them the faces of this mystery, how to delight them with the luster of a mystery and to intoxicate them with such a simple fascination. – Emil Cioran
50. All people confuse the limit of their vision with the limits of the world. – Arthur Schopenhauer
51. I was often ridiculed by the weak who considered themselves good only because they had no claws. / I have often laughed at the weaklings who thought themselves good because they had no claws. – Friedrich Nietzsche
52. And those who were seen dancing were considered mad by those who could not hear the music. / And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music. – Friedrich Nietzsche
53. There are days when I am haunted by a darker feeling than the darkest melancholy. I despise those whom I must call my contemporaries. – Friedrich Nietzsche
54. Know yourself. – Socrates
55. I am neither Athenian nor Greek, I am a citizen of the world. – Socrates
56. Nature has given us two ears, two eyes, and only one tongue – to hear and see more than we speak. – Socrates
57. Through discipline you get freedom. – Aristotle
58. I’m not upset that you lied to me, I’m upset that now I can’t believe you. – Nietzsche
59. There are two types of people in this world, those who want to know and those who want to believe. – Nietzsche
60. Be careful when you get rid of your demons not to throw the best in yourself. – Nietzsche
61. The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself. To be conquered by yourself is the most shameful and vulgar. – Plato
62. My loneliness does not depend on the presence or absence of people. On the contrary, I hate to be robbed of loneliness without being offered real company in return. – Nietzsche
63. Sometimes people do not want to hear the truth because they do not want their illusions destroyed. – Nietzsche
64. To remain yourself in a world that is trying to change you is the greatest achievement. – Ralph Waldo Emerson
65. Be kind to others because they all fight a hard life. – Socrates
66. If you hate someone, it means he has defeated you. – Confucius
67. True knowledge means knowing that you know nothing. – Socrates

Deep philosophical quotes about love

Love is one of the most important aspects of life. When they were not misogynists or misanthropes, philosophers appreciated love relationships and what extra love brings into our lives.

68. To love means to suffer, and as many flee from suffering, few know how to love. – Unknown
69. When we reach love, we all become poets. – Plato
70. I avoid those big words that make us so unhappy. – James Joyce
71. Some people never go crazy. What horrible lives he must lead. – Charles Bukovski
72. Anxiety is the dizziness caused by freedom. – Soren Kierkegaard

Philosophical quotes about knowledge

Knowledge and truth are some of the main themes of philosophers in any period of time. I have chosen for you three such philosophical quotes about the power of knowledge.

73. A school where the teacher does not learn is also absurd. – Unknown
74. No one is more ugly than the one who tells the truth. – Plato
75. All we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is perspective, not truth. – Marcus Aurelius

Philosophical quotes worth considering

God, nothingness, revolution, the power of questions, etc. are just some of the other important topics that many philosophers have thought about and contemplated and about which they have managed to produce thoughts worthy of consideration. So here are some philosophical quotes about other relevant topics of life that were not covered in the quotes above.

76. You have your way. Me on mine. As for the right path and the only way – it does not exist. – Friedrich Nietzsche
77. Moods, this must be given to others; no content, no advice, no teaching. – Unknown
78. Nothingness is more rational than being. It is homogeneous, reversible, indifferent. Exactly what reason wants.
79. But the ideal of every creator is not to speak as everyone speaks, but on the contrary, to make the world speak as he speaks. 
81. I can’t teach anyone anything, I can just make them think. – Socrates
82. I know you will not believe me, but the highest form of human excellence is to question both yourself and others. – Socrates
83. The greatest way to live your life with honor in this world is to be what you claim to be. – Socrates
84. Poverty is the father of the revolution. – Socrates
85. To find yourself, think with your own mind. – Socrates
86. Smart people learn from everything that happens to them and from everyone. Mediocre people learn from their own experience, and stupid people already have all the answers. – Socrates
87. To predict the behavior of ordinary people you just have to assume that they will always try to get out of an unpleasant situation with the slightest consumption of intelligence. – Nietzsche
88. Understanding the question is half the answer. – Socrates
89. To write well, express yourself as simple people, but think like a sage. – Aristotle
90. Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. – Aristotle
91. The energy of the mind is the essence of life. – Aristotle
92. The individual always had to fight not to be overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try this you will often feel lonely and sometimes you will be scared. But no price is too high for the privilege of being your own master. – Friedrich Nietzsche
93. The snake that cannot bark dies. So are minds that can’t change their minds. They stop being lies. – Friedrich Nietzsche
94. We must give up the bad taste of wanting to agree with other people. – Nietzsche
95. The surest way to corrupt young people is to train them to have more respect for those who think differently than those who think differently. – Nietzsche
96. What is good is also beautiful. – Plato
97. All things are the object of interpretation, but what interpretation dominates at some point depends on power, not truth. – Nietzsche
98. Human behavior derives from three sources: desire, emotion and knowledge. – Plato
99. In individuals, madness is rare. But in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. – Nietzsche
100. The best answer to anger is silence. – Marcus Aurelius
101. No snowflake in the avalanche will ever feel responsible. – Voltaire
102. We are what we do repeatedly. So, excellence is not an act, it is a habit. – Aristotle
103. The education of the mind without the education of the soul cannot be called education at all. – Aristotle
104. Only time can heal, not reason. – Seneca
105. Most people are just other people. Their thoughts are the opinions of others, their lives are an imitation, and their passions a quote. – Oscar Wilde
106. The things you think about determine the quality of your mind. The soul takes on the color of your thoughts. – Marcus Aurelius
107. Ask yourself at any time: this is really necessary
– Marcus Aurelius
108. Not even the greatest anxiety influences the outcome of what will happen anyway. – Alan Watts

Philosophical quotations are probably the deepest there are. When you are ready to think about the essence of things to choose a few philosophical quotes to contemplate in all their depth is probably one of the best options. We hope you found many philosophical quotes that resonated with us from our list and that made you think and maybe even challenged you to think more deeply about your life choices. Leave us a comment below with your feedback, we would appreciate it very much. Thank you!

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