The Most Famous Statements in the
History of Philosophy
"I think; therefore I am (Cogito ergo
sum)."
—René
Descartes
"The unexamined life is not worth
living."
—Socrates
(according to Plato)
"God is dead."
—Friedrich
Nietzsche
"Nietzsche is dead."
—God
"You can't step into the same river
twice."
—Heraclitus
"Cratylus [an extreme disciple of Heraclitus], who finally
did not think it right to say anything but only moved his finger, criticized
Heraclitus [his teacher] for saying that it is impossible to step twice into
the same river; for he thought one could not do it even once!"
—Aristotle (Metaphysics,
Bk. IV, Ch. 5).
"Man [i.e., the individual] is the measure
of all things."
—Protagoras
"The tao that
can be explained is not the real Tao."
—Lao
Tzu
"What we cannot speak about we must pass
over in silence."
—Ludwig
Wittgenstein
"Hell is other people."
—Jean-Paul Sartre
"A freedom which wills itself freedom is in fact a being-which-is-not-what-it-is and
which-is-what-it-is-not, and which chooses the ideal of being,
being-what-it-is-not and not-being-what-it-is." [What?]
—Jean-Paul Sartre
"To be is to be perceived (Esse est percipi)."
—George
Berkeley
"The real is rational, and the rational is
real."
—G.W.F.
Hegel
"All things are made of water, and all
things are full of gods."
—Thales
"Man is by nature a political
animal."
—Aristotle
"Man is born free but is everywhere in
chains."
—Jean-Jacques
Rousseau
"Concepts without percepts are empty;
percepts without concepts are blind."
—Immanuel
Kant
"Truth is subjectivity."
—Sören Kierkegaard
"The entire history of western philosophy
is nothing but a series of footnotes to Plato."
—Alfred
North Whitehead
"Men will never be
free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest."
—Denis Diderot
"Out of love for mankind, and out of despair at my embarrassing
situation, seeing that I had accomplished nothing and was unable to make
anything easier than it had already been made, and moved by a genuine interest
in those who are dedicated to making everything easy, I conceived it as my task
[the task of the philosopher] to create difficulties everywhere."
—Sören Kierkegaard