Wesleyan University Philippines

Mabini St. Extension, Cabanatuan City, Nueva Ecija

College of Business and Accountancy
Eldie E. Padilla
4FM-2

Quotations from Famous Philosophers

1.

Immanuel Kant
Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral law within me.
We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.
Look closely. The beautiful may be small.
The death of dogma is the birth of morality.
Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.
One who makes himself a worm cannot complain afterwards if people step on him.
Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.
Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.
I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.
But only he who, himself enlightened is not afraid of shadows.

2.

Niccolo Machiavelli
Never was anything great achieved without danger.
It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.
I'm not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.
There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.
The wise man does at once what the fool does finally.
He who wishes to be obeyed must know how to command.
It is double pleasure to deceive the deceiver.
Never was anything great achieved without danger.
Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.
The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.

3.

Jeremy Bentham
The power of the lawyer is in the uncertainty of the law.
Lawyers are the only persons in whom ignorance of the law is not punished.
Stretching his hand up to reach the stars, too often man forgets the flowers at his feet.
Every law is an infraction of liberty.
Reputation is the road to power
Tyranny and anarchy are never far apart.
Happiness is a very pretty thing to feel, but very dry to talk about.
The quantity of pleasure being equal, push-pin is as good as poetry.
...the rarest of all human qualities is consistency.
It is the greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong.

4. John Stuart Mill

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.

 Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are
conservative.
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and
patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
One person with a belief is equal to ninety-nine who have only interests.
I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy
them.
It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any
human being.
The liberty of the individual must be thus far limited; he must not make himself a nuisance to
other people.
The disease which inflicts bureaucracy and what they usually die from is routine.
Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends.
Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.
5.

6.

Thomas Hobbes
Words are the counters of wise men, and the money of fools.
Leisure is the mother of Philosophy.
For to accuse requires less eloquence, such is man's nature, than to excuse; and condemnation,
than absolution, more resembles justice.
When the entire world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which
provided for every man, by victory or death.
A man's conscience and his judgment is the same thing, and, as the judgment, so also the
conscience may be erroneous.
If men are naturally in a state of war, why do they always carry arms and why do they have keys to
lock their doors?
It's not the pace of life I mind. It's the sudden stop at the end.
No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death;
and the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
What is the heart but a spring, and the nerves but so many strings, and the joints but so many
wheels, giving motion to the whole body?
Covenants, without the sword, are but words and of no strength to secure a man at all.

Ayn Rand
Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness.
Freedom (n.): To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing.
A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to
be defenders of minorities.
If you don't know, the thing to do is not to get scared, but to learn.
The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see.
The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone.
You can avoid reality, but you cannot avoid the consequences of avoiding reality.
The truth is not for all men but only for those who seek it.
Never think of pain or danger or enemies a moment longer than is necessary to fight them.

7.

Socrates
The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.
There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance.
I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think
Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, and weak minds discuss people.
Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.
Be slow to fall into friendship, but when you are in, continue firm and constant.
By all means marry; if you get a good wife, youll become happy; if you get a bad one, youll become
a philosopher.
The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to
enjoy less.

8. Plato
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.
Every heart sings a song, incomplete, until another heart whispers back. Those who wish to sing
always find a song. At the touch of a lover, everyone becomes a poet.
Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to
everything.
We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are
afraid of the light.
The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their
minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of
each.
The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.
Love is a serious mental disease.
9. Charles Sanders Peirce
Every new concept first comes to the mind in a judgment.
Chance is First, Law is Second, and the tendency to take habits is Third. Mind is First, Matter is
Second, and Evolution is Third.
There is a kink in my damned brain that prevents me from thinking as other people think.
Unless man has a natural bent in accordance with natures, he has no chance of understanding
nature at all.
Let it be considered that what is more wholesome than any particular belief is integrity of belief;
and that to avoid looking into the support of any belief from a fear that it may turn out rotten is
quite as immoral as it is disadvantageous.
May some future student go over this ground again, and have the leisure to give his results to the
world.
To know what we think, to be masters of our own meaning, will make a solid foundation for great
and weighty thought.
Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical
side of logic.
My language is the sum total of myself.
Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts.
10.
William James
Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action.
The art of being wise is knowing what to overlook.
The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his attitude.
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.
We are like islands in the sea, separate on the surface but connected in the deep.
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact.
The great use of a life is to spend for something that outlasts it.
As a rule we disbelieve all the facts and theories for which we have no use.

11. John Dewey

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
We do not learn from experience... we learn from reflecting on experience.
We only think when confronted with a problem.
Failure is instructive. The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from
his successes.
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
The self is not something ready-made, but something in continuous formation through choice of
action.
Man lives in a world of surmise, of mystery, of uncertainties.
Time and memory are true artists; they remould reality nearer to the heart's desire.
To me faith means not worrying.
Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another.
12. St. Thomas Aquinas
Beware the man of a single book.
To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is
possible.
There is nothing on this earth more to be prized than true friendship.
Love follows knowledge.
Rarely affirm, seldom deny, and always distinguish.
The happy man in this life needs friends.
Most men seem to live according to sense rather than reason.
Wonder is the desire of knowledge.
The things that we love tell us what we are.
Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine

13.Siddharta Gautama
Pain is certain, suffering is optional.
You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection
If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.
You will not be punished for your anger; you will be punished by your anger.
If you truly loved yourself, you could never hurt another.
You only lose what you cling to.
Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.
Three things cannot hide for long: the Moon, the Sun and the Truth.
There is no path to happiness: happiness is the path.
Every morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.
14. Miriam Defensor-Santiago

 Fungus Face!Santiago, then Commissioner of the Bureau of Immigration and Deportation,

calling former Rep. Nereo Joaquin when he criticized her in a privilege speech for effecting the
arrest of foreign pedophiles in his district.
Pinaliwanag ko na, ayaw niyang makinig. Eh, kung hahamunin ko na lang siya ng suntukan?
Santiago challenging Joaquin to a fistfight.
In the spirit of Holy Week, which is approaching, I amend my previous offer to fight. Instead, I
challenge him to take an IQ test with me in UP!Another challenge to Joaquin.
Sir, I remind you that as the Commissioner of Immigration and Deportation, I represent the
majesty of the Republic of the Philippines. You have the obligation to show respect and courtesy to
me. Now shut up, or Ill knock your teeth off!Santiago telling an arrested foreigner to shut up
when he interrupted her during a press conference.
I may not be a genius, but my opponents are certifiable idiots.Santiago in her presidential
campaign speech.
Tell the truth before the senators affected have you assassinated.Santiago telling alleged pork
barrel scam mastermind Janet Napoles to name names.
Kapag tumataas ang posisyon mo sa gobyerno, lumiliit ang balls mo.Santiagos conclusion after
observing that low-level government employees play basketball, those in mid-level positions play
bowling, and high-ranking officials play golf.
Tatalon ako sa eroplano pag naaresto si Erap. and I lied.Santiagos assertion that former
President Joseph Estrada would never be arrested, and her response afterwards after he was
arrested.
I am surrounded by idiotsSantiagos description of the members of Commission on
Appointments which was accidentally overheard.
I am not angry. I am irate. I am foaming in the mouth. I am homicidal. I am suicidal. I am
humiliated, debased, degraded. And I am not only that, I feel like throwing up to be living my
middle years in a country of this nature. I am nauseated. I spit on the face of Chief Justice Artemio
Panganiban and his cohorts in the Supreme Court, I am no longer interested in the position if I was
to be surrounded by idiots. I would rather be in another environment but not in the Supreme Court
of idiots.Santiagos reaction after being bypassed for the post of Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court