Nothing exists; even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and even if something can be known about it, knowledge about it can't be communicated to others.
— Gorgias
Emotional Greek Philosophy quotations
You must understand what the Parthenon Marbles mean to us.
They are our pride. They are our sacrifices. They are our noblest symbol of excellence. They are a tribute to the democratic philosophy. They are our aspirations and our name. They are the essence of Greekness.
When you want wisdom and insight as badly as you want to breathe, it is then you shall have it.
White folks was in the caves while we [blacks] was building empires .
.. We built pyramids before Donald Trump ever knew what architecture was ... we taught philosophy and astrology and mathematics before Socrates and them Greek homos ever got around to it.
The Greeks, with their truly healthy culture, have once and for all justified philosophy simply by having engaged in it, and having engaged in it more fully than any other people.
Artists, like the Greek gods, are only revealed to one another.
I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.
The gift of truth excels all other gifts.
...for the object of education is to teach us to love beauty.
Those whose hearts are fixed on Reality itself deserve the title of Philosophers.
I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.
Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully;
after him, all have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat.
Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending.
Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few.
Eventually, Aristotle appeared among the Greeks.
He improved the methods of logic and systematized its problems and details. He assigned to logic its proper place as the first philosophical discipline and the introduction to philosophy. Therefore he is called the First Teacher.
The Greek philosophies teach us that we are a combination of dark and light, good and evil, and murderer and savior, hmm? And until we know this completely about ourselves we cannot love well, and we cannot forgive ourselves.
Everything flows and nothing abides. Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.
Greek philosophy departs from the assumption that we can understand the world autonomously using our rational faculties. Islam is not saying this.
The oldest philosophy in the world is conservatism, and I go clear back to the first Greeks. ... When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party away from the Republican Party, and make a religious organization out of it. If that ever happens, kiss politics goodbye.
Greek is a musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy.
I think the Greeks invented sports as an antidote to philosophy.
In sports there are absolute rules. It's not, What about this? What about that? Either you're safe or you're out. It's ten yards or it's not. It's in the hoop or out of the hoop. It's certain.
I think the Greeks invented sports as an antidote to philosophy.
Rumors and reports of man's relation with animals are the world's oldest news stories, headlined in the stars of the zodiac, posted on the walls of prehistoric caves, inscribed in the languages of Egyptian myth, Greek philosophy, Hindu religion, Christian art, our own DNA. Belonging within the circle of mankind's intimate acquaintance ... constant albeit speechless companions, they supplied energies fit to be harnessed or roasted.
We are usually told that democracy originated in ancient Athens - like science, or philosophy, it was a Greek invention. It's never entirely clear what this is supposed to mean. Are we supposed to believe that before the Athenians, it never really occurred to anyone, anywhere, to gather all the members of their community in order to make joint decisions in a way that gave everyone equal say?
Philosophy is at its most engaged when it is impure.
What is being recovered from the Ancient Greek model is not some lost idea of philosophy's pure essence, but the idea that philosophy is mixed up with everything else.
I never thought Greek philosophy could make a damn bit of sense to me.
And most of it didn't, but those words just seemed right. 'Love is composed of a single soul, inhabiting two bodies.'" He took her by the shoulders drawing her close. "It rang true for me, in a way nothing else did. Whatever soul I had, Katie, I think I placed it in your keeping twenty years ago. And now, it's as if...every time we kiss, you give a little piece of it back.
Everything is change; and you cannot step twice into the same river.
The teachings of Osho, in fact, encompass many religions, but he is not defined by any of them. He is an illuminating speaker on Zen, Taoism, Tibetan Buddhism, Christianity and ancient Greek philosophy... and also a prolific author.
While the Tamils were inventing cabs and leather jackets, we Greeks were busy inventing philosophy. But I guess everybody needs cabs and leather jackets.
Plotinus, when he thinks about mind or intellect, the Greek word is 'nous', he thinks about something that's very different, it's much more elevated and special, more abstract, you might say more philosophical than the very broad range of mental events that we talk about in contemporary philosophy of mind.
I wanted to get the most broad foundation for a lifelong education that I could find, and that was studying Latin and the classics. Meaning Roman and Greek history and philosophy and ancient civilizations.