Philosophers' Direct Quotes

Plato

“In the word of knowledge, the last thing to be perceived and only with great difficulty, is the essential Form of Goodness, which is the source of whatever is right and good for all things, it is sovereign in the intelligible world and the parent of intelligence and truth… Without a vision of this Form, no one can act with wisdom, either in his life or in matters of the state.”

Plato

“The soul of every man possesses the power of learning the truth and the organ to see it with and just as one would have to turn that whole body around in order that the eye should see light instead of darkness, so the entire soul must be turned away from the changing world until its eye can bear to contemplate reality and that supreme splendor called the Good.”

Aristotle

“Virtue is a settled disposition of the mind as regards the choice of actions and emotions, consisting in the observance of the mean relative to us, this being determined by principles… It is mean state between two vices.”

Aristotle

“… to feel these feelings (fright, anger, desire, pity, pleasure, pain) at the right time, on the right occasion, towards the right people, for the right purpose, and in the right manner, is to feel the best amount of them, which is the mean amount and the best amount is the mark of virtue.”

Aristotle

“For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one fine day. Similarly, one day or a brief period of happiness does not make a man supremely blesses and happy.”

Immanuel Kant

“Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except Goodwill.”

Immanuel Kant

“The will stands between it’s a priori principle which is formal and its a posteriori incentive which is material.”

Immanuel Kant

“Duty is the necessity of an action done from respect for the law… To have moral worth, an action must be done from duty.”

Immanuel Kant

“To duty, every other motive must give place, because duty is the condition of the will good-in-itself, whose worth transcends everything.”

Immanuel Kant

“Thus, the moral worth of an action does not lie in the effect which is expected from it.”

Immanuel Kant

“A maxim is the subjective principle of volition. The objective principle is the practical law, that I should follow such a law even if it thwarts all my inclination.”

Immanuel Kant

“To test whether an act is consistent with Duty: Can I call that my maxim become a universal law?”

Immanuel Kant

Universalizability Principle: “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that is should become a universal law.”

John Stuart Mill

The Greatest Happiness Principle: “Actions are right as they tend to produce happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and absence of pain.”

John Stuart Mill

“Each person’s happiness counts the same as everyone else’s.“

John Stuart Mill

“It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied, better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.”

George Edward Moore

“I believe the good to be definable and, yet, still say that good itself is indefinable.”

George Edward Moore

“A definition states what are the parts which invariably compose a certain while; and it is in this sense ‘good’ has no definition because it is simple and has no parts.”

Alfred Jules Ayer

“Ethical concepts are pseudo-concepts and, therefore, unanalyzable.”

Alfred Jules Ayer

“The presence of an ethical symbol in a proposition adds nothing to its factual content.”

Rudolf Carnap

“A value statement is nothing else than a command in a misleading grammatical form.”

William James

“Grant an idea or belief to be true… what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone’s actual life? … What in short, is the truth’s cash value in experiential terms?

William James

“The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property inherent in it. Truth happens to an idea.”

William James

“The true is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as the right is only the expedient in the way of our behaving.”

William James

“Meanwhile, we have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.”

John Locke

“Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of all characters, without any ideas (tabula rasa)…”

George Berkeley

“ese es percipi (to be is to be perceived)”

Plato

“Until philosophers are kings, then will this, our state, have a possibility of life and behold the light of day.”

Socrates

“One thing only I know, and that is I know nothing.”

Aristotle

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Aristotle

“The Supreme Good is happiness.”

Cyrenaics

“Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow you might die.”

Epicurus

“Attain bodily health and peace of mind, you have achieved the highest felicity."

Epicurus

"The ideal is a life of bodily health and mental calm spent in the company of friends speculating about nature and the cosmos."

Friedrich Waismann

“A philosophic question is not solved; it dissolves.”

Anaximander

“At first, human beings arose in the inside of fishes, and after having been reared like sharks and become capable of protecting themselves; they were finally cast ashore and took to land.”

Anaximenes

“Air differs from substance, because of its rarefaction and condensation.”

Anaximenes

“Just as our soul, being air, holds us together, so do breath and air encompass the whole world.”

Heraclitus

“You can’t step twice into the same river, for freshwaters are ever flowing in upon you… We both step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not (The river has been changed; you have changed).”

Heraclitus

“This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made. But it was ever, is now, and ever shall be an ever living fire, with measures of its kindling, and measures going out (Fire is no the primal substance, was just used to illustrate change).”

Anaxagoras

"There are as many seeds or elements as there are kinds of things, and however much of it is divided, each part will contain elements of everything else (Matter is infinitely divisible).”

Plato

“Virtue is knowledge. Knowledge is wisdom. Knowledge is remembrance.”

Jeremy Bentham

“Everybody to count for one, nobody for more than one.”