119 Western Philosophy Quotes

Following is our list of western philosophy quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about modern philosophy.

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Famous Western Philosophy Quotes

Philosophy begins in wonder. — Plato

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

Philosophy is common sense with big words. — James Madison

Indeed heresies are themselves instigated by philosophy — Tertullian

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 sum total of all that you know and what you decide is valuable. — Jim Rohn

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 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

Philosophy is, in the last instance, class struggle in the field of theory. - Louis Althusser

Philosophy is, in the last instance, class struggle in the field of theory. — Louis Althusser

History is Philosophy teaching by example. — Thucydides

Philosophy is the science which considers truth. — Aristotle

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

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

Western culture is what gave us Mozart, and Da Vinci, and Wagner, and Beethoven. — Milo Yiannopoulos

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men. — Bertrand Russell

Western Culture Quotes

Western culture is what is at risk from immigration from the Middle East. - Milo Yiannopoulos

Western culture is what is at risk from immigration from the Middle East. — Milo Yiannopoulos

The majority of Western culture came out of Europe, which is not comparable to America. It came out of nation states based on geographical and ethnic foundations. America is based on principles, a very different kind of country. — Milo Yiannopoulos

According to this view, democracy is a product of western culture, and it cannot be applied to the Middle East which has a different cultural, religious, sociological and historical background. — Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Western culture is what keeps women and gays safe. - Milo Yiannopoulos

Western culture is what keeps women and gays safe. — Milo Yiannopoulos

Every aspect of Western culture needs a new code of ethics - a rational ethics - as a precondition of rebirth. — Ayn Rand

I went to the West and saw Islam, but no Muslims; I got back to the East and saw Muslims, but not Islam. — Muhammad Abduh

Western 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.

What 'multiculturalism' boils down to is that you can praise any culture in the world except Western culture - and you cannot blame any culture in the world except Western culture. — Thomas Sowell

Part of me has always resisted the Western clichéd image of Muslim women, depicting them as nothing more than silent victims. My art, without denying 'repression,' is a testimony to unspoken female power and the continuing protest in Islamic culture. — Shirin Neshat

For a Westerner to trash Western culture is like criticizing our nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere on the grounds that it sometimes gets windy, and besides, Jupiter's is much prettier. You may not realize its advantages until you're trying to breathe liquid methane. — Neal Stephenson

I don't want our culture diluted. We need to close the borders now and let everyone assimilate to a Western, white, English-speaking way of life. — Gavin McInnes

Modern Philosophy Quotes

Posterity will one day laugh at the sublime foolishness of the modern materialistic philosophy. The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. I pray while I am engaged at my work in the laboratory. — Louis Pasteur

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seems puny and trivial. — Henry David Thoreau

Western 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.

In science it often happens that scientists say, "You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken..." — Carl Sagan

We are tainted by modern philosophy which has taught us that all is good, whereas evil has polluted everything and in a very real sense all is evil, since nothing is in its proper place. — Joseph De Maistre

In point of fact, Western philosophy has never set itself free of Christianity: wherever Christianity did not have a hand in the construction of modern philosophy it served instead as a stumbling block. — Jacques Maritain

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

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

Modern philosophy certainly exacts a surrender of all supernaturalism and fixed dogma and rigid institutionalism with which Christianity has been historically associated — John Dewey

Behind the epistemological scholasticism of empirio-criticism one must not fail to see the struggle of parties in philosophy, a struggle which in the last analysis reflects the tendencies and ideology of the antagonistic classes in modern society. — Vladimir Lenin

There follows a little obscenity here, a dash of philosophy there, considerable whining overall, and a modern satirical novel is born. — Renata Adler

Eastern Philosophy Quotes

A man of wisdom delights in water. — Confucius

He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions. — Confucius

I play basketball on Sundays and I'm a very spiritual guy; I read a lot of Eastern philosophy and I meditate. — Garry Shandling

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

To know yourself you need not go to any book, to any priest, to any psychologist. The whole treasure is within yourself. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Gandhi became my role model. I have always been interested in Eastern philosophy. Since early in my life I've been fascinated by India, and I have spent a great deal of time traveling in that country. — Bianca Jagger

"All conditioned things are impermanent" - when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering. — Buddha

Study without reflection is a waste of time; reflection without study is dangerous. — Confucius

The fact is that you are not the body. The Self does not move but the world moves in it. You are only what you are. — Ramana Maharshi

If a man takes no thought about what is distant, he will find sorrow near at hand. — Confucius

Men's natures are alike; it is their habits that separate them. — Confucius

Western Civilization Quotes

Armaments, universal debt and planned obsolescence - those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. — Aldous Huxley

Christianity and Western civilization-what countless crimes have been committed in thy name! — Ngugi wa Thiong'o

Western civilization, unfortunately, does not link knowledge and morality but rather, it connects knowledge and power and makes them equivalent. — Vine Deloria Jr.

Western civilization, unfortunately, does not link knowledge and morality but rather, it connects knowledge and power and makes them equivalent. — Vine Deloria, Jr.

Free speech is not some right-wing reframing of whatever; it is the foundation of Western civilization. — Konstantin Kisin

Western civilization is a loaded gun pointed at the head of this planet. — Terence McKenna

What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea. — Mahatma Gandhi

In Western Civilization, our elders are books. — Gary Snyder

An important aspect of the Eurasian worldview is an absolute denial of Western civilization. In the opinion of the Eurasians, the West with its ideology of liberalism is an absolute evil. — Aleksandr Dugin

To be sure, the story of Hurricane Katrina does have a moral for anyone not deliberately blind. The races are different. Blacks and whites are different. When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western Civilization-any kind of civilization-disappears. — Jared Taylor

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

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

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

An ingenious compound of desirability and appearance. Discovery of truth is the sole purpose of philosophy, which is the most ancient occupation of the human mind and has a fair prospect of existing with increasing activity to the end of time. — Ambrose Bierce

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

Philosophy And Religion Quotes

The Sun Stone, the famous Aztec calendar, is unquestionably a perfect summary of science, philosophy, art and religion. — Samael Aun Weor

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd. — Bertrand Russell

Those who live by mystery & charlatanerie, fearing you would render them useless by simplifying the Christian philosophy - the most sublime and benevolent, but most perverted system that ever shone on man - endeavored to crush your well-earned & well-deserved fame. — Thomas Jefferson

However many holy words you read, However many you speak, What good will they do you If you do not act on upon them? — Buddha

A cult is a religion with no political power. - Tom Wolfe

A cult is a religion with no political power. — Tom Wolfe

I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world, and yet they lay their hands on everything they can get. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful. — Seneca

An Inuit hunter asked the local missionary priest: If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell? No, said the priest, not if you did not know. Then why, asked the Inuit earnestly, did you tell me? — Annie Dillard

God made so many different kinds of people; why would God allow only one way to worship? — Martin Buber

There is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism — Alvin Plantinga

Western World Quotes

Now, some of the most dangerous places for women to be in the world are modern, Western, rich European countries. Why? One reason. Islamic immigration - it's got to stop. — Milo Yiannopoulos

We hear a constant clamor for rights, rights, always rights, but so very little about responsibility. And we have forgotten God. The need now is for selflessness, for a spirit of sacrifice, for a willingness to put aside personal gains for the salvation of the whole Western world. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Such as it is, the press has become the greatest power within the Western World, more powerful than the legislature, the executive and judiciary. One would like to ask; by whom has it been elected and to whom is it responsible? — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

People have a right to violence, to rebel, to fight back. And given what the United States Government and Western powers have done to the third world, I feel that these countries should fight back. — Yuri Kochiyama

Istanbul, a universal beauty where poet and archeologist, diplomat and merchant, princess and sailor, northerner and westerner screams with same admiration. The whole world thinks that this city is the most beautiful place on earth. — Edmondo De Amicis

The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion […] but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-Westerners never do. — Samuel P. Huntington

You see, in this world, there's two kinds of people, my friend - those with loaded guns, and those who dig. You dig. — Clint Eastwood

Marx, Darwin and Freud are the three most crashing bores of the Western World. Simplistic popularization of their ideas has thrust our world into a mental straitjacket from which we can only escape by the most anarchic violence. — William Golding

The corporate grip on opinion in the United States is one of the wonders of the Western world. No First World country has ever managed to eliminate so entirely from its media all objectivity - much less dissent. — Gore Vidal

We think we have a responsibility. And I think it's important for all of us in the Western world to realize that we've all been blessed a lot and if you go to these parts they don't have a lot, even before the tsunami. — Kevin Rollins

People Writing About Western Philosophy

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Read quotes by Plato

Plato
quotes on life, love and reality

945 13426
Read quotes by Seneca

Seneca
quotes on life, love and time

1196 4543
Read quotes by Alfred North Whitehead

Alfred North Whitehead
quotes on god, education

327 1529
Read quotes by James Madison

James Madison
quotes on constitution, government and democracy

509 5798
Read quotes by Tertullian

Tertullian
quotes on trinity, marriage

109 1575
Read quotes by Voltaire

Voltaire
quotes on life, government and human nature

756 16591

More Western Philosophy Quotes

Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty. — Bertrand Russell

I created 'The Westerner' because of anger - anger at never-miss sheriffs, always-right marshalls, whitewashed gunfighters ... anger at TV's quick-draw tin gods who stand behind a tin star or ten cents' worth of righteous anger and justify their skill and slaughter with a self-conscious grin or a minute's worth of bad philosophy. — Sam Peckinpah

The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy. — Bertrand Russell

The distinctive principle of Western social philosophy is individualism. — Ludwig von Mises

Go is to Western chess what philosophy is to double-entry accounting. — Trevanian

The life of Islamic philosophy did not terminate with Ibn Rushd nearly eight hundred years ago, as thought by Western scholarship for several centuries. Rather, its activities continued strongly during the later centuries, particularly in Persia and other eastern lands of Islam, and it was revived in Egypt during the last century. — Seyyed Hossein Nasr

(on A History of Western Philosophy) I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if, indeed, such man exists. — Bertrand Russell

Today the West is awakening to its wants; and the "true self of man and spirit" is the watchword of the advanced school of Western theologians. The student of Sanskrit philosophy knows where the wind is blowing from, but it matters not whence the power comes so longs as it brings new life. — Sayings

Since philosophy is the art which teaches us how to live, and since children need to learn it as much as we do at other ages, why do we not instruct them in it? — Michel de Montaigne

Every faith uses some kind of tool to understand itself better. Faith seeks understanding. The Western tradition has used philosophy to understand the truths of the faith and you come up with theology. Where as, Islam at a certain point said: we'll use law. There are these four major, developed schools of Islamic jurisprudence. — Francis George

The negative attitudes toward the genres - romance, science-fiction, westerns, suspense, etc. - are fallout from the academic world's long-standing fascination with existential philosophy and modern theories of psychology and sociology. — Jayne Ann Krentz

The legacy of Greece to Western philosophy is Western philosophy. — Bertrand Russell

If there are more than two sexes, then so be it and, of course, the assumption that there are two helps shape, as many have argued, the binary logic that underpins much of the history of western philosophy. — Alison Assiter

In the USA, we learn "art history" as Western art history, and the history of Asian, or African art is a special case; we learn politics by examining our own government system, and consider other systems special cases, and the same is true of philosophy. — Jay L. Garfield

Western philosophers gained access to Asian and African traditions initially by noting similarities and differences. But that, as A.C. Mukerji, of Allahabad, was to note in 1932, is not to do philosophy, but is at best a preparation. — Jay L. Garfield

It's sort of another innovation, probably a good innovation, of Western culture to separate the ideas between science and philosophy, but it's important to remember they weren't always separate realms of inquiry. — Brad Warner

Before the scientific rationalism took hold of our minds and before we became succumbed to a materialistic worldview, the Western philosophy was holistic and relational, and even now there are many scientists in the West seeing things totally interconnected. — Satish Kumar

The Oriental philosophy approaches easily loftier themes than the modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have not conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their sense. — Henry David Thoreau

The philosophy of love and peace strangely overlooked who was in possession of the guns. There had been love and peace for some time on the continent of Africa because for all this time black men had been captivated by the doctrines of Christianity. It took them centuries to realize its contradictions. ... perhaps there was no greater crime as yet than all the lies Western civilization had told in the name of Jesus Christ. — Bessie Head

In the western philosophy you can't perceive infinities at every moment. It's not there to do. — Frederick Lenz

How significant is Aristotle? Well, I wouldn’t want to exaggerate, so let me put it this way: Abandoning Aristotelianism, as the founders of modern philosophy did, was the single greatest mistake ever made in the entire history of Western thought. — Sayings

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