145 Greek Philosophy Quotes

Following is our list of greek philosophy quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about greek culture.

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Famous Greek Philosophy Quotes

Philosophy begins in wonder. — Plato

I like to think that someone will trace how the deepest thinking of India made its way to Greece and from there to the philosophy of our times — John Archibald Wheeler

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains. — Alfred North Whitehead

The pursuit of what is true and the practice of what is good are the two most important objects of philosophy. — Voltaire

Philosophy is the art and law of life, and it teaches us what to do in all cases, and, like good marksmen, to hit the white at any distance. — Seneca

The Greeks possessed a knowledge of human nature we seem hardly able to attain to without passing through the strengthening hibernation of a new barbarism. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

Philosophy does not regard pedigree, she received Plato not as a noble, but she made him one. — Seneca

Indeed heresies are themselves instigated by philosophy — Tertullian

the power of philosophy floats through my head.. light like a feather, heavy as lead. — Bob Marley

Philosophy is the science which considers truth. — Aristotle

History is Philosophy teaching by example. — Thucydides

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. — Plato

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things. — Epictetus

Because philosophy arises from awe, a philosopher is bound in his way to be a lover of myths and poetic fables. Poets and philosophers are alike in being big with wonder. — Thomas Aquinas

Ancient Philosophy Quotes

After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense. — Werner Heisenberg

Do not say a little in many words but a great deal in a few. — Pythagoras

Every trace of the old philosophy and literatureof the ancient world has vanished from the face of the earth. — Saint John Chrysostom

Greek philosophy quote Everything is energy and that's all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and
Everything is energy and that's all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.

Ancient philosophy proposed to mankind an art of living. By contrast, modern philosophy appears above all as the construction of a technical jargon reserved for specialists. — Pierre Hadot

The idea of the universe as an interconnected whole is not new; for millennia it's been one of the core assumptions of Eastern philosophies. What is new is that Western science is slowly beginning to realize that some elements of that ancient lore might be correct. — Dean Radin

According to the saying of an ancient philosopher, one should eat to live, and not live to eat — Moliere

Greek philosophy quote My philosophy is: It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am and
My philosophy is: It's none of my business what people say of me and think of me. I am what I am and I do what I do. I expect nothing and accept everything. And it makes life so much easier.

The gift of truth excels all other gifts. — Buddha

(The Tao) is always present and always available. . . . If you are willing to be lived by it, you will see it everywhere, even in the most ordinary things. — Lao Tzu

...for the object of education is to teach us to love beauty. — Plato

Those whose hearts are fixed on Reality itself deserve the title of Philosophers. — Plato

Greek Culture Quotes

In business you need two Jews for one Greek, two Greeks for one Syrian and two Syrians for one Armenian — Greek Proverbs

Superheroes fill a gap in the pop culture psyche, similar to the role of Greek mythology. There isn't really anything else that does the job in modern terms. For me, Batman is the one that can most clearly be taken seriously. — Christopher Nolan

American culture is kind of a universal culture, I guess. It's things Greeks grew up with, common references you can use. It's very interesting. — Yorgos Lanthimos

Greek philosophy quote Leisure is the mother of philosophy.
Leisure is the mother of philosophy.

Kant does represents a distinctively modern view of the human condition in contrast to that of ancient high culture, found in ancient Greek ethics and also in ancient Chinese ethics. — Allen W. Wood

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. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Greek culture is pleasant to contemplate because of its great simplicity and naturalness, and because of the absence of gadgets, each of which is sooner or later a cause of servitude. — George Sarton

Greek philosophy quote Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.
Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

I had the good luck a few years ago to visit the archeological site of Zippori in Israel ... I could see here displayed the Greek culture that Jesus decisively rejected, the same Greek culture that infiltrated the Christian religion soon after his death and has dominated Christianity ever since. — Freeman Dyson

Genetically, I'm pure Greek. Psychologically, environmentally, culturally, by choice, I'm a member of the black community. — Johnny Otis

Just as the ideal of classic Greek culture was the most perfect harmony of mind and body, so a human and a bicycle are the perfect synthesis of body and machine. — Richard Ballantine

Classical music is a special taste like Greek language or pre-Columbian archeology, not a common culture of reciprocal communication and psychological shorthand. — Allan Bloom

Greek Civilization Quotes

The war of ideas is a Greek invention. It is one of the most important inventions ever made. Indeed, the possibility of fighting with with words and ideas instead of fighting with swords is the very basis of our civilization, and especially of all its legal and parliamentary institutions. — Karl Popper

First there was Greek civilization. Then there was the Renaissance. Now we’re entering the Age of the Ass. — Jean-Luc Godard

Civil servants and priests, soldiers and ballet-dancers, schoolmasters and police constables, Greek museums and Gothic steeples, civil list and services list -- the common seed within which all these fabulous beings slumber in embryo is taxation. — Karl Marx

All the wonders of the Greek civilization heaped together are less wonderful than the single book of Psalms. Greece had all that this world could give her; but the flowers of Paradise blossomed in Palestine alone. — William E. Gladstone

The sentiments attributed to Christ are in the Old Testament. They were familiar in the Jewish schools and to all the Pharisees, long before the time of Christ, as they were familiar in all the civilizations of the earth - Egyptian, Babylonian, and Persian, Greek, and Hindu. — Joseph McCabe

We were discussing civilization and the fact that young men among the Greeks at that time were idiots and uneducated, so the men had emotional and friendly relationships with members of their own sex — Marion Zimmer Bradley

I am not a Catholic; but I consider the Christian idea, which has its roots in Greek thought and in the course of the centuries has nourished all of our European civilization, as something that one cannot renounce without becoming degraded. — Simone Weil

In all of Western civilization, there have been societies that celebrating the homosexuality, the ancient Greeks. But they, in fact, protected the institution of marriage as a union between one man and one woman. They got the joke. And the American people get the joke. — Ken Blackwell

I'm sure back in the Greek days or the Roman Empire days, when guys fought in arenas and were fighting lions, people were talking smack. Every era in history has someone talking smack. No way you can have talent and not proclaim your victory. — J. B. Smoove

The western nations of Europe, who now so immeasurably surpass their former savage progenitors, and stand at the summit of civilization, owe little or none of their superiority to direct inheritance from the old Greeks, though they owe much to the written works of that wonderful people. — Charles Darwin

Ancient Greece Quotes

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie. — Steven Pressfield

The spirit of Greece, passing through and ascending above the world, hath so animated universal nature, that the very rocks and woods, the very torrents and wilds burst forth with it. — Walter Savage Landor

He is the richest who is content with the least. — Socrates

The road to the Olympics, leads to no city, no country. It goes far beyond New York or Moscow, ancient Greece or Nazi Germany. The road to the Olympics leads — in the end — to the best within us. — Jesse Owens

Nobody can say a word against Greek: it stamps a man at once as an educated gentlemen. — George Bernard Shaw

In many ways we are all sons and daughters of ancient Greece. — Nia Vardalos

We are living in the era of the busybody. In ancient Greece, if a person wanted guidance, it involved a long, arduous expensive journey to consult the oracle at Delphi. Today, if you want guidance, all you have to do is unplug your ears. — Margo Kaufman

And so, inevitably, one returns to the centre of Western culture, Greece, and we have never, in any sense, lost our ties with the architectural concepts that this country's ancient civilization explored and demonstrated, nor with the political and social freedom that lay behind them. — Stephen Gardiner

Ancient of days! august Athena! where, Where are thy men of might? thy grand in soul? Gone--glimmering through the dream of things that were; First in the race that led to glory's goal, They won, and pass'd away--Is this the whole? — Lord Byron

I judge wisely...as if nothin ever surprise me, Loungin, between two pillars of ivory. I'm lively, my dome piece is like buildin stones in Greece. My poems are deep, from ancient thrones I speak. — Killah Priest

Greek Art Quotes

Your looks are laughable, unphotographable, yet you're my favorite work of art. Is your figure less than Greek, is your mouth a little weak? When you open it to speak, are you smart? — Chet Baker

I have a high art, I hurt with cruelty those who would damage me. - Archilochus

I have a high art, I hurt with cruelty those who would damage me. — Archilochus

There are men whose manners have the same essential splendor as the simple and awful sculpture on the friezes of the Parthenon, and the remains of the earliest Greek art. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The future science of government should be called 'la cybernétique' (1843) Coining the French word to mean 'the art of governing,' from the Greek (Kybernetes = navigator or steersman), subsequently adopted as cybernetics by Norbert Weiner for the field of control and communication theory. — Andre-Marie Ampere

Botany is the art of insulting flowers in Greek and Latin. — Alphonse Karr

The Dance of the Future will have to become again a high religious art as it was with the Greeks. For art which is not religious is not art, it is mere merchandise — Isadora Duncan

The oldest theory of art belongs to the Greeks, who regarded art as an imitation (mimesis) of reality. The strength of that theory is that it explains the way in which art takes its materials from real life. — Leland Ryken

Prehistoric art came to move me much more than Greek art. Greek art has beautiful women and handsome men, but I don't care. — Pierre Soulages

I merely say that all reading for pleasure is escape, whether it be Greek, mathematics, astronomy, Benedetto Croce, or The Diary of the Forgotten Man. To say otherwise is to be an intellectual snob, and a juvenile at the art of living. — Raymond Chandler

All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent. — John Ruskin

Plato And Aristotle Quotes

Socrates became a trendsetter. Other philosophers, including Plato and Aristotle and Gus, quickly followed suit, dropping their last names too. And, for centuries after that there would be countless imitators including oltaire, Michelangelo, and, much later, Cher. — Demetri Martin

The only good thing that we owe to Plato and Aristotle is that they brought forward many arguments which we can use against the heretics. Yet they and other philosophers are now in hell. — Girolamo Savonarola

Socrates had a student named Plato, Plato had a student named Aristotle, and Aristotle had a student named Alexander the Great. — Tom Morris

Trees are good for contemplation. Plato and Aristotle did their best thinking in the groves of olives and figs around Athens, and Buddha found enlightenment beneath a bo or peepul tree. — Colin Tudge

In all the good Greek of Plato I lack my roastbeef and potato. A better man was Aristotle, Pulling steady on the bottle. — John Crowe Ransom

The authority of Plato and Aristotle, of Zeno and Epicurus, still reigned in the schools; and their systems, transmitted with blind deference from one generation of disciples to another, precluded every generous attempt to exercise the powers, or enlarge the limits, of the human mind. — Edward Gibbon

I will admit, like Socrates and Aristotle and Plato and some other philosophers, that there are instances where the death penalty would seem appropriate. — Jack Kevorkian

Our tradition of political thought had its definite beginning in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle. I believe it came to a no less definite end in the theories of Karl Marx. — Hannah Arendt

Aristotle compiled the first known comprehensive list of all winners of the Olympic Games. Which means that quite probably he was sat in a bar with Plato, muttering 'Go on then, give me any year you like and I'll tell you who won the four-man bobsleigh.' — Mark Steel

But, indeed, the science of logic and the whole framework of philosophical thought men have kept since the days of Plato and Aristotle, has no more essential permanence as a final expression of the human mind, than the Scottish Longer Catechism. — George Herbert

Ancient Greek Quotes

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. — Pericles

Sex and sleep alone make me conscious that I am mortal. — Alexander The Great

Be as you wish to seem. — Socrates

Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in ancient Greek republics: Freedom for slave owners. — Vladimir Lenin

As the ancient Greeks replaced myth-based explanations with mechanistic models of the Solar System, their emphasis shifted from asking why to asking how. — Max Tegmark

The ancient Greek definition of happiness was the full use of your powers along lines of excellence. — John F. Kennedy

We look at the ancient Greeks with their gods on a mountain top throwing lightning bolts and say, 'Those ancient Greeks. They were so silly. So primitive and naive. Not like our religions. We have burning bushes talking to people and guys walking on water. We're ...sophisticated.' — Paul Provenza

Chaos does not mean total disorder. Chaos means a multiplicity of possibilities. Chaos is from the ancient Greek words that means a thing that is birthed from the void. And it was about that which is possible, not about disorder. — Jok Church

Few men have the natural strength to honor a friend's success without envy. — Aeschylus

Of all the small nations of this earth, perhaps only the ancient Greeks surpass the Scots in their contribution to mankind. — Winston Churchill

Greek Mythology Quotes

Being a hero doesn’t mean you’re invincible. It just means that you’re brave enough to stand up and do what’s needed. — Rick Riordan

According to Greek mythology, humans were originally created with four arms, four legs and a head with two faces. Fearing their power, Zeus split them into two separate parts, condemning them to spend their lives in search of their other halves. — Plato

I'm obsessed with Greek mythology. My favorite goddess is Artemis. She's strong and reminds me of Katniss, the heroine of The Hunger Games. — Isabelle Fuhrman

II know a little about Greek mythology. It's not that far away from the Nordic mythology. — Sayings

In our household, the Bible, the Koran and the Bhagavad Gita sat on the shelf alongside books of Greek and Norse and African mythology — Barack Obama

Something has got to hold it together. I'm saying my prayers to Elmer, the Greek god of glue. — Tom Robbins

Hollywood grew to be the most flourishing factory of popular mythology since the Greeks. — Alistair Cooke

..,No love cannot leave where there is no trust..,~cupid and psyche..,"Greek mythology of Edith Hamilton — Edith Hamilton

In Greek mythology, Antaeus was a giant who was strong as long as he had contact with the earth. When he was lifted from the earth he lost strength. So it is with engineers. They must not become isolated from the real world... — Hyman Rickover

It did remind me of something out of Greek mythology - the richest king who gets everything he wants, but ultimately his family has a curse on it from the Gods. — Martin Scorsese

Greek Myth Quotes

Let us see how high we can fly before the sun melts the wax in our wings. — E. O. Wilson

...it seemed to me I was living in an insane asylum of my own making. I wnt about with all these fantastic figures: centaurs, nymphs, satyrs, gods and goddesses, as though they were patients and I was analyzing them. I read a Greek or Negro myth as if a lunatic were telling me his anamnesis. — Carl Jung

Children are much more understanding of the suddenness and arbitrariness of death than we are. The old fairy tales contain a lot of that, and we've stolen from them, just as they stole from Greek myth, which has that same mixture of pre-Christian chaos. — Emma Thompson

Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts. — Vladimir Nabokov

NFL Films has had one continuous, creative vision for 47 years. These are timeless things; timeless stories that we capture just like people go back and read Greek mythology. — Steve Sabol

I've long said that comic books are the modern equivalent of our Greek myths. — David S. Goyer

The muse of music isn't just from Greek mythology, but living in people like the Beatles, Chuck Berry, Anita Baker, Aretha Franklin. — Ernie Isley

When I was a kid, I took 'The Brady Bunch' and 'The Partridge Family' very seriously. It was a world to me in the same way that the Greek myths would have been had I read them. You know, Marcia is Athena and Mr. Brady is Zeus. — George Saunders

All the superhero stuff is Greek myths and Greek gods, wearing tights and capes. That's what they are. That's what I gravitate towards. — Louis Leterrier

For the liver, what's so interesting is that there's no stem cell in the liver. So the normal liver actually can regenerate. It's one of the only organs in the human body that can do this, and we've known this since the time of Greek mythology. — Sangeeta N. Bhatia

Greek Drama Quotes

Religion enabled society to organise itself to debate goodness, just as Greek drama had once done. — Edward Bond

I don't buy into any of that hogwash. They put that out to sell tickets. It's just a classic horror movie, with the Greek drama formula of good versus evil, and lots of fear. — Margot Kidder

Movies are immortal art - the first new art since Greek drama. — Eric Johnston

We should return to the Greeks, play in the open air: the drama dies of stalls and boxes and evening dress, and people who come to digest their dinner. — Eleanora Duse

Baseball is an art! A drama! A ballet without music! Let us give it a Greek chorus! — Deborah Wiles

Well, opera began with an intent to resuscitate Greek drama, that is, modern opera as we know it. — John Eaton

If you look at the timing of many of the Greek dramas from the theatrical point of view, it's all off, and I think the reason for that is that music played a very important part. — John Eaton

Plays are just all sort of playful asides, and there's a great deal of reference here to Greek mythology, plays, and dramas. The idea of the chorus is really important in Greek drama and I loved the idea of including that. — Lauren Groff

We need new art. Old art cannot do that. It can do lots of other things, and of course humanity hasn't changed that much in the last thousand or two thousand years.So that the old Greek dramas are still at the very heart, core, of human experience, but still we need new stuff. — Esa-Pekka Salonen

I think great humor lies in playing the truth of a situation. I see myself as a performer and that applies to a Greek drama or a modern comedy. — Brendan Coyle

People Writing About Greek Philosophy

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quotes on life, love and reality

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Read quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

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quotes on god, education

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quotes on life, government and human nature

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Georg C. Lichtenberg
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More Greek Philosophy Quotes

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

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. — Melina Mercouri

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. — Al Sharpton

When you want wisdom and insight as badly as you want to breathe, it is then you shall have it. — Socrates

Greek philosophy departs from the assumption that we can understand the world autonomously using our rational faculties. Islam is not saying this. — Tariq Ramadan

Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending. — Karl Marx

I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows. — Plato

Everything flows and nothing abides. Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed. — Heraclitus

Everything is change; and you cannot step twice into the same river. — Mary Renault

I think the Greeks invented sports as an antidote to philosophy. — Jack Nicholson

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. — Jack Nicholson

Artists, like the Greek gods, are only revealed to one another. — Oscar Wilde

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. — Nevill Drury

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. — Thomas Jefferson

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. — Ray Bradbury

Aristotle is the last Greek philosopher who faces the world cheerfully; after him, all have, in one form or another, a philosophy of retreat. — Bertrand Russell

While the Tamils were inventing cabs and leather jackets, we Greeks were busy inventing philosophy. But I guess everybody needs cabs and leather jackets. — Romain Gavras

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. — Peter Adamson

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. — Tessa Dare

Greek is a musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy. — Edward Gibbon

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. — Tim Blake Nelson

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. — Lewis H. Lapham

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. — Barry Goldwater

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. — Ibn Khaldun

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? — David Graeber

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. — Julian Baggini

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