“Great abuses in the world are begotten, or, to speak more boldly, all the abuses of the world are begotten, by our being taught to be afraid of professing our ignorance, and that we are bound to accept all things we are not able to refute.”— Michel de Montaigne, Essais
Philosophy Bits
Interesting and insightful quotes from humanity's greatest minds!Curated by: @suliqyre
Instagram/Threads: @philosophybits
Bluesky: @philosophybits.com
Mastodon: @[email protected]
“One of life’s primal situations; the game of hide and seek. Oh, the delicious thrill of hiding while the others come looking for you, the delicious terror of being discovered, but what panic when, after a long search, the others abandon you! You mustn’t hide too well. You mustn’t be too good at the game. The player must never be bigger than the game itself.”— Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories
“Even that part of our knowledge which is logically independent of experience is yet elicited and caused by experience.”— Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
What characterizes the free spirit is not that his opinions are the more correct but that he has liberated himself from tradition, whether the outcome has been successful or a failure.
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, 225
“Treat your inferiors as you would be treated by your betters.”— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius
Speak and act well and you will get out of any difficult situation.
Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom
“I go around doing nothing but persuading both young and old among you not to care for your body or your wealth in preference to or as strongly as for the best possible state of your soul, as I say to you: Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.”— Socrates, in Plato’s Apology
Every man casts himself into the world by making himself a lack of being; he thereby contributes to reinvesting it with human signification. He discloses it. […] But it is up to each one to make himself a lack of more or less various, profound, and rich aspects of being. What is called vitality, sensitivity, and intelligence are not ready-made qualities, but a way of casting oneself into the world and of disclosing being.
Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity
“Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.”— Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers
It is not right to put strength ahead of wisdom, which is good.
Xenophanes, Fragments, B2
“In man there is a deep so profound it is hidden even to him in whom it is.”— Augustine, Expositions on the Psalms
And this is how it is: if only you do not try to utter what is unutterable then nothing gets lost. But the unutterable will be – unutterably – contained in what has been uttered!
Ludwig Wittgenstein, “Letter to Paul Engelmann (9 April 1917)”
“Whenever one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny.”— Simone Weil, Lectures on Philosophy
Why am I an artist and not a philosopher? Because I think according to words and not according to ideas.
Albert Camus, Notebooks, 1942-1951
“Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine. It isn’t money, for genius seldom gets any. It isn’t fame: fame is too uncertain and, more closely considered, of too little worth. Nor is it strictly for its own pleasure, for the great exertion involved almost outweighs the pleasure. It is rather an instinct of a unique sort by virtue of which the individual possessed of genius is impelled to express what he has seen and felt in enduring works without being conscious of any further motivation. It takes place, by and large, with the same sort of necessity as a tree brings forth fruit, and demands of the world no more than a soil on which the individual can flourish.”— Arthur Schopenhauer, “On Philosophy and the Intellect”, Parerga and Paralipomena
