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200 thinkers, one idea each
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A.J. Ayer
“There is no category of error more dangerous than that of seeming to say something while actually saying nothing.”
Ada Lovelace
“The Analytical Engine weaves algebraic patterns just as the Jacquard loom weaves flowers.”
Alan Turing
“We can only see a short distance ahead, but we can see plenty there that needs to be done.”
Alasdair MacIntyre
“A community without traditions is a community without a history.”
Albert Camus
“In the middle of winter I discovered there was in me an invincible summer.”
Albert Einstein
“Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten
“Aesthetics is the science of sensory knowledge.”
Alfred North Whitehead
“The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.”
Allan Gibbard
“To plan is to decide what to do.”
Alvin Plantinga
“The most important questions are the ones most often left unexamined.”
Anaxagoras
“Everything has a natural explanation.”
Antisthenes
“Virtue can be taught.”
Antonio Gramsci
“I'm a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”
Aristotle
“Excellence is never an accident.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
“Compassion is the basis of morality.”
Auguste Comte
“Ideas govern and overthrow the world.”
Augustine of Hippo
“Our heart is restless until it rests in Thee.”
Averroes
“Ignorance leads to fear, fear leads to hate, and hate leads to violence.”
Avicenna
“The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.”
Barbara Herman
“Moral reasoning requires the whole person.”
Baruch Spinoza
“Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it.”
Benedetto Croce
“Art is the expression of the feeling of life.”
Bernard Williams
“There is one good thing about the past: it's done.”
Bertrand Russell
“The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.”
Blaise Pascal
“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Blaise Pascal
“There is a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of each man.”
Boethius
“In other living creatures the ignorance of themselves is nature; in man it is vice.”
Bonaventure
“The road to happiness lies in the simplicity of heart.”
C.D. Broad
“There is no reason why common sense should not be wrong.”
Carl Friedrich Gauss
“Few, but ripe.”
Carl Sagan
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”
Charles Darwin
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, but the most adaptable.”
Charles Sanders Peirce
“The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit.”
Charles Taylor
“The good life involves a narrative unity.”
Christian Wolff
“Logic is the art of thinking well.”
Christian Wolff
“Philosophy should be useful to life.”
Christine Korsgaard
“We have an obligation to live up to the identity we have chosen.”
Confucius
“It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop.”
D.M. Armstrong
“Universals are immanent in particulars.”
Daniel Dennett
“The secret of happiness is: find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.”
David Chalmers
“Consciousness is the biggest mystery.”
David Hilbert
“We must know. We will know.”
David Hume
“Reason is the slave of the passions.”
David Lewis
“Possible worlds are ways the world could have been.”
Democritus
“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space.”
Derek Parfit
“We are the first creatures to have evolved to the point at which we can understand our own evolution.”
Desiderius Erasmus
“The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.”
Diogenes of Sinope
“It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.”
Donald Davidson
“What a person believes cannot be separated from what they do.”
Douglas Hofstadter
“The self is a mirage, but a necessary one.”
Duns Scotus
“Love is stronger than knowledge as a way to God.”
Emmanuel Levinas
“The face of the other calls me to responsibility.”
Empedocles
“All things have intelligence and a share of thought.”
Epicurus
“Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not.”
Ernest Sosa
“Knowledge requires reliability.”
Ernst Bloch
“The present is not yet.”
Ernst Cassirer
“Man lives in a symbolic universe.”
Ernst Mach
“The purpose of science is to describe experience as economically as possible.”
Erwin Schrödinger
“What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
F.W.J. Schelling
“Nature is visible spirit; spirit is invisible nature.”
Francis Bacon
“Knowledge is power.”
Francis Hutcheson
“The greatest happiness for the greatest number.”
Frank Jackson
“There are things we know and things we experience, and they are not the same thing.”
Frank Ramsey
“It is a waste of time to worry about what you cannot help.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”
G.A. Cohen
“Facts about the world constrain what counts as a good argument.”
G.E. Moore
“Good is good, and that is the end of the matter.”
G.E.M. Anscombe
“The mark of the good man is that he does what is right without calculating the consequences.”
Georg Cantor
“The essence of mathematics lies in its freedom.”
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
“Nothing great in the world was accomplished without passion.”
George Santayana
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Georges Sorel
“The myth is a set of images capable of evoking instinctively all the sentiments.”
Giambattista Vico
“We know what we make.”
Gilbert Ryle
“Knowing how is not reducible to knowing that.”
Giovanni Gentile
“Thought thinks itself.”
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
“We can become whatever we choose to become.”
Gorgias
“Nothing exists; even if it does exist, it cannot be known.”
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz
“The present is saturated with the past and pregnant with the future.”
Gottlob Frege
“A statement about probability is a statement about a ratio.”
H.H. Price
“Beliefs arise out of evidence.”
H.P. Grice
“Make your contribution as informative as is required.”
Hannah Arendt
“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”
Hans Reichenbach
“Inductive inference is not a deductive inference.”
Hans-Georg Gadamer
“To understand is to be transformed.”
Harriet Taylor Mill
“The principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes is wrong in itself.”
Harry Frankfurt
“Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good too.”
Henri Bergson
“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.”
Henri Poincaré
“It is the harmony of the diverse parts, their symmetry, their happy balance that is the whole.”
Heraclitus
“The only constant in life is change.”
Iamblichus
“The soul must ascend through practice.”
Immanuel Kant
“Act only according to principles you would will to be universal law.”
Iris Murdoch
“Love is the extremely difficult realisation that something other than oneself is real.”
Isaac Newton
“If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
Isaiah Berlin
“Liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience.”
J.L. Austin
“Words are deeds.”
J.L. Mackie
“Moral values are not objective features of the world.”
Jacques Derrida
“Every concept that is defined requires something it excludes.”
Jane Addams
“The good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain until it is secured for all of us.”
Jean Buridan
“The will must choose between equally attractive options.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
Jean-Paul Sartre
“We are condemned to be free.”
Jeremy Bentham
“Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove.”
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
“The self is activity.”
John Dewey
“Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.”
John Locke
“Education begins the gentleman, but reading, good company and reflection must finish him.”
John Rawls
“Justice is the first virtue of social institutions.”
John Searle
“Language is the expression of intentionality.”
John Stuart Mill
“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction.”
John von Neumann
“In mathematics you don't understand things. You just get used to them.”
José Ortega y Gasset
“Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.”
Jürgen Habermas
“Reason must be a universal principle, or it is not reason at all.”
Karl Jaspers
“Every failure is instructive.”
Karl Marx
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it.”
Karl Popper
“Our knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite.”
Kurt Gödel
“Every formal system complex enough to be interesting is either incomplete or inconsistent.”
Laozi
“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
Leonhard Euler
“Nothing takes place in the world whose meaning is not that of some maximum or minimum.”
Linda Zagzebski
“Virtue is a stable character trait that leads to human flourishing.”
Lucien Laberthonnière
“Truth is not something outside us but something within us to be realised.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.”
Maimonides
“Teach thy tongue to say 'I do not know', and thou shalt progress.”
Marcus Aurelius
“You have power over your mind - not outside events.”
Marie Curie
“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.”
Marsilio Ficino
“Beauty is the splendour of truth.”
Martha Nussbaum
“Emotions are not just feelings. They are forms of evaluative judgement.”
Martin Heidegger
“Every man is born as many men and dies as a single one.”
Mary Wollstonecraft
“Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience.”
Maurice Blondel
“Action is the test of thought.”
Maurice Merleau-Ponty
“The body is our general medium for having a world.”
Max Born
“Science is not just a collection of laws, a catalogue of facts; it is the creation of the human mind.”
Max Planck
“A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents — they eventually die.”
Max Stirner
“I have set my cause on nothing.”
Mencius
“The great man does not think beforehand of his words that they may be sincere.”
Michael Dummett
“The meaning of a statement is determined by the conditions for its truth.”
Michael Sandel
“Markets don't only allocate goods; they also express and promote certain values.”
Michael Walzer
“The rules of war are a soldiers' moral code.”
Michael Zimmerman
“Intrinsic value is value that something has in itself.”
Michel de Montaigne
“Every man carries the whole stamp of the human condition within him.”
Michel Foucault
“People know what they do; frequently they know why they do what they do; but what they don't know is what what they do does.”
Miguel de Unamuno
“Suffering is the substance of life and the root of personality.”
Mikhail Bakunin
“The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.”
Moritz Schlick
“The meaning of a proposition is the method of its verification.”
Mozi
“Whoever loves others is loved by others.”
Nagarjuna
“If you are not attached to what you do, then your actions will always be sincere.”
Nelson Goodman
“Truth is a matter of fit.”
Niccolò Machiavelli
“It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.”
Nicholas of Cusa
“Learned ignorance is the highest form of knowledge.”
Niels Bohr
“An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.”
Nikola Tesla
“The present is theirs; the future for which I have really worked is mine.”
Noam Chomsky
“The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.”
Onora O'Neill
“Trustworthiness requires more than good intentions.”
Otto Neurath
“We are like sailors who must rebuild their ship on the open sea.”
P.F. Strawson
“Personal identity is not the identity of things, but of persons.”
Parmenides
“What is, is. What is not, is not.”
Paul Dirac
“A physical law must possess mathematical beauty.”
Paul Ricoeur
“Language is the house of being.”
Peter Abelard
“The beginning of wisdom is found in doubting.”
Peter Kropotkin
“Mutual aid is the most powerful evolutionary force.”
Peter Singer
“If it is in our power to prevent something bad from happening, without sacrificing anything of comparable moral importance, we ought to do it.”
Peter van Inwagen
“The most powerful philosophical work is done by thought experiments.”
Philippa Foot
“Virtue is a settled disposition to act well.”
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
“Property is theft — unless it is earned.”
Plato
“Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.”
Plotinus
“Knowledge has three degrees — opinion, science, illumination.”
Porphyry
“We should try to be as like god as possible.”
Proclus
“The good is diffusive of itself.”
Protagoras
“Man is the measure of all things.”
Pyrrho of Elis
“Suspend judgement and you will find peace.”
Pythagoras
“Above all things, reverence yourself.”
René Descartes
“I think, therefore I am.”
Richard Feynman
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”
Richard Rorty
“The world does not speak. Only we do.”
Richard Swinburne
“Simplicity is evidence of truth.”
Robert Nozick
“The best life is not necessarily the most pleasant one.”
Roger Penrose
“Understanding is not the same as computation.”
Ronald Dworkin
“Rights are trumps.”
Rosa Luxemburg
“Those who do not move, do not notice their chains.”
Rudolf Carnap
“The unity of science is the unity of life.”
Saul Kripke
“Names are rigid designators.”
Seneca
“It is not that I'm so smart; it's just that I stay with problems longer.”
Simon Blackburn
“Ethics is about what matters.”
Simone de Beauvoir
“One is not born, but rather becomes.”
Socrates
“The unexamined life is not worth living.”
Søren Kierkegaard
“Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”
Stephen Hawking
“Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.”
Sun Tzu
“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.”
Susan Wolf
“A meaningful life is one that is actively and wholeheartedly engaged in projects of worth.”
Thales of Miletus
“Know thyself.”
Theodor Adorno
“He who has laughter on his side has no need of proof.”
Thomas Aquinas
“The things that we love tell us what we are.”
Thomas Hobbes
“The condition of man is a condition of war of everyone against everyone.”
Thomas Kuhn
“The answers you get depend on the questions you ask.”
Thomas Nagel
“The capacity for transcendence brings with it a liability to alienation.”
Voltaire
“Perfect is the enemy of good.”
W.V.O. Quine
“To be is to be the value of a variable.”
Werner Heisenberg
“Not only is the universe stranger than we think, it is stranger than we can think.”
William James
“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”
William of Ockham
“Entities should not be multiplied beyond necessity.”
Xenophanes
“Men make gods in their own image.”
Zeno of Citium
“Man conquers the world by conquering himself.”