Philosophy on action

“Necessity is the mother of invention.”

“Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

“While we are postponing, life speeds by.”

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

“A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction.”

“The perfect is the enemy of the good.”

“Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don't help us, who else in the world can help us do this?”

“I hope the dogs don't bark tonight. I always think it's mine.”

“I do not want to found anything on the incomprehensible. I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone.”

“That body is heavier than another which, in an equal bulk, moves downward quicker.”

“For the things we have to learn before we can do, we learn by doing.”

“I have resolved to demonstrate by a certain and undoubted course of argument, or to deduce from the very condition of human nature, not what is new and unheard of, but only such things as agree best with practice.”

“I pass, at length, to the third and perfectly absolute dominion, which we call democracy.”

“The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.”

“I may as well say at once that I do not distinguish between inference and deduction. What is called induction appears to me to be either disguised deduction or a mere method of making plausible guesses.”

“What does not exist must be something, or it would be meaningless to deny its existence; and hence we need the concept of being, as that which belongs even to the non-existent.”

“Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.”

“How much good it would do if one could exterminate the human race.”

“The principal source of the harm done by the State is the fact that power is its chief end.”

“The tongue is like a sharp knife, it kills without drawing blood; words in the hands of someone skilled can do more damage than a weapon in the hands of a warrior.”

“Just as the eldest son of a wheel-turning monarch properly keeps in motion the wheel of sovereignty set in motion by his father, so do you, Sāriputta, properly keep in motion the Wheel of Dhamma set in motion by me.”

“Not by birth does one become an outcaste, not by birth does one become a brahman. By one's action one becomes an outcaste, by one's action one becomes a brahman.”

“I will go about, from kingdom to kingdom,”

“The innumerable worlds in the cosmos are like the eyes of the net. Each and every world is different, its variety infinite. So too are the Dharma Doors (methods of cultivation) taught by the Buddhas.”

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Without, everything seems discordant; only within does it coalesce into unity. Who looks outside dreams; who looks inside awakes.”

“The healthy man does not torture others—generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.”

“We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.”

“We do not know whether Hitler is going to found a new Islam. (He is already on the way; he is like Mohammed. The emotion in Germany is Islamic; warlike and Islamic. They are all drunk with a wild god.)”

“We know as little of a supreme being as of Matter. But there is as little doubt of the existence of a supreme being as of Matter. The world beyond is reality, and experiential fact. We only don't understand it.”

“One of the most difficult tasks men can perform, however much others may despise it, is the invention of good games and it cannot be done by men out of touch with their instinctive selves.”

“Seldom, or perhaps never, does a marriage develop into an individual relationship smoothly and without crises; there is no coming to consciousness without pain.”

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.”

“Men do not stumble over mountains, but over molehills”

“A man's character is formed by the Odes, developed by the Rites and perfected by music.”

“The man of perfect virtue is cautious and slow in his speech. When a man feels the difficulty of doing, can he be other than cautious and slow in speaking?”

“Only after Winter comes do we know that the pine and the cypress are the last to fade.”

“Perfect is the virtue which is according to the Mean! Rare have they long been among the people, who could practice it!”

“When one cultivates to the utmost the principles of his nature, and exercises them on the principle of reciprocity, he is not far from the path. What you do not like when done to yourself, do not do to others.”

“How abundantly do spiritual beings display the powers that belong to them! We look for them, but do not see them; we listen to, but do not hear them; yet they enter into all things, and there is nothing without them.”

“Benevolence is the characteristic element of humanity.”

“To be fond of learning is to be near to knowledge. To practice with vigor is to be near to magnanimity. To possess the feeling of shame is to be near to energy.”

“By the ruler's cultivation of his own character, the duties of universal obligation are set forth. By honoring men of virtue and talents, he is preserved from errors of judgment.”

“The way of Heaven and Earth may be completely declared in one sentence: They are without any doubleness, and so they produce things in a manner that is unfathomable.”

“To no one but the Son of Heaven does it belong to order ceremonies, to fix the measures, and to determine the written characters.”

“As to the Approbation or Esteem of those Blockheads who call themselves the Public, & whom a Bookseller, a Lord, a Priest, or a Party can guide, I do most heartily despise it.”

“Here am I who have written on all sorts of subjects calculated to excite hostility, moral, political, and religious, and yet I have no enemies — except, indeed, all the Whigs, all the Tories, and all the Christians.”

“From the comparison of theism and idolatry, we may form some other observations, which will also confirm the vulgar observation that the corruption of the best things gives rise to the worst.”

“Other people’s views and troubles can be contagious. Don’t sabotage yourself by unwittingly adopting negative, unproductive attitudes through your associations with others.”

“Against that positivism which stops before phenomena, saying there are only facts, I should say: no, it is precisely facts that do not exist, only interpretations.”

“Mastery over nature, the Idée fixe of the 20th century, is Brahmanism, Indo-German.”

“The artist — as the one who compels motion through art media toward art — cannot be simultaneously the absorptive instrument of art's own activity.”

“Mathematics would certainly have not come into existence if one had known from the beginning that there was in nature no exactly straight line, no actual circle, no absolute magnitude.”

“Great God, I ask thee for no meaner pelf / Than that I may not disappoint myself, / That in my action I may soar as high / As I can now discern with this clear eye.”

“How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.”

“He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.”

“Ten thousand do not turn the scale against a single man of worth.”

“Into the same rivers we step and do not step, we are and are not.”

“The part I understand is excellent, and so too is, I dare say, the part I do not understand; but it needs a Delian diver to get to the bottom of it.”

“Herakleitos looks down not only on the mass of men, but on all previous inquirers into nature.”

“Plato’s contrast between Herakleitos and Empedokles ...is ...that, while Herakleitos said the One was always many, and the Many always one, Empedokles said the All was many and one by turns.”

“The concept of space is not abstracted from external sensations.”

“A philosophical attempt to work out a universal history according to a natural plan directed to achieving the civic union of the human race must be regarded as possible and, indeed, as contributing to this end of Nature.”

“A writer who takes political, social or literary positions must act only with the means that are his. These means are the written words.”

“Three o'clock is always too late or too early for anything you want to do.”

“I construct my memories with my present. I am lost, abandoned in the present. I try in vain to rejoin the past: I cannot escape.”

“Generosity is nothing else than a craze to possess. All which I abandon, all which I give, I enjoy in a higher manner through the fact that I give it away.... To give is to enjoy possessively the object which one gives.”

“In order to make myself recognized by the Other, I must risk my own life. To risk one's life, in fact, is to reveal oneself as not-bound to the objective form or to any determined existence — as not-bound to life.”

“All human activities are equivalent ... and ... all are on principle doomed to failure.”

“The For-itself, in fact, is nothing but the pure nihilation of the In-itself; it is like a hole of being at the heart of Being.”

“Some men are born committed to action: they do not have a choice, they have been thrown on a path, at the end of that path, an act awaits them, their act.”

“Ah! Do not judge the gods, young man, they have painful secrets.”

“A man who is free is like a mangy sheep in a herd. He will contaminate my entire kingdom and ruin my work.”

“What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.”

“Blood doubly unites us, for we share the same blood and we have spilled blood.”

“To what shall the character of utility be ascribed, if not to that which is a source of pleasure?”

“Prose is when all the lines except the last go on to the end. Poetry is when some of them fall short of it.”

“He found the philosophy of law a chaos, he left it a science: he found the practice of the law an Augean stable, he turned the river into it which is mining and sweeping away mound after mound of its rubbish.”

“This life affords no solid satisfaction, but in the consciousness of having done well, and the hopes of another life.”

“I doubt not, but from self-evident Propositions, by necessary Consequences, as incontestable as those in Mathematics, the measures of right and wrong might be made out.”

“Children (nay, and men too) do most by example.”

“Virtue is harder to be got than knowledge of the world; and, if lost in a young man, is seldom recovered.”

“It is not because men's desires are strong that they act ill; it is because their consciences are weak.”

“France has done more for even English history than England has.”

“The utilitarian doctrine is, that happiness is desirable, and the only thing desirable, as an end; all other things being only desirable as means to that end.”

“Since the state must necessarily provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on crime.”

“The Tao is like a well: used but never used up. It is like the eternal void: filled with infinite possibilities. It is hidden but always present. I don't know who gave birth to it. It is older than God.”

“By letting it go it all gets done. The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try, the world is beyond the winning.”

“He who knows does not speak; he who speaks does not know.”

“A thousand-mile journey starts from your feet down there.”

“What I hear, I forget. What I say, I remember. What I do, I understand.”

“When the center does not hold, the circle falls apart.”

“Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them – that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.”

“An ant on the move does more than a dozing ox”

“Logic takes care of itself; all we have to do is to look and see how it does it.”

“Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.”

“It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.”

“The world is the totality of facts, not things. (1.1)”

“What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts. (2)”

“If I cannot say a priori what elementary propositions there are, then the attempt to do so must lead to obvious nonsense. (5.5571)”

“The subject does not belong to the world, but it is a limit of the world. (5.632)”

“There are, indeed, things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical. (6.522)”

“For remember that in general we don't use language according to strict rules — it hasn't been taught us by means of strict rules, either.”

“I must plunge into the water of doubt again and again.”

“Frazer's account of the magical and religious views of mankind is unsatisfactory; it makes these views look like errors.”

“A religious symbol does not rest on any opinion. And error belongs only with opinion. One would like to say: This is what took place here; laugh, if you can.”

“The ceremonial (hot or cold) as opposed to the haphazard (lukewarm) characterizes piety.”

“The problems are dissolved in the actual sense of the word — like a lump of sugar in water.”

“Philosophy unravels the knots in our thinking; hence its results must be simple, but its activity is as complicated as the knots that it unravels.”

“Philosophers are often like little children, who first scribble random lines on a piece of paper with their pencils, and now ask an adult What is that?”

“The meaning of a question is the method of answering it: then what is the meaning of 'Do two men really mean the same by the word white?' Tell me how you are searching, and I will tell you what you are searching for.”

“Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilised—the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals.”

“We who seek justice will have to do justice to others.”

“The only real, dignified, human doctrine is the greatest good of all, and this can only be achieved by uttermost self-sacrifice.”

“In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.”

“It has always been easier to destroy than to create.”

“No action which is not voluntary can be called moral.”

“Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.”

“Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men. The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

“Politics without principle, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice — are the seven social sins.”

“Her reverence for the divine, her generosity, her inability not only to do wrong but even to conceive of doing it. And the simple way she lived—not in the least like the rich. (Hays translation)”

“He was a man who looked at what ought to be done, not to the reputation which is got by a man's acts.”

“You see how few things you have to do to live a satisfying and reverent life? If you can manage this, that's all even the gods can ask of you. (Hays translation)”

“You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think. (Hays translation)”

“The ruling power within, when it is in its natural state, is so related to outer circumstances that it easily changes to accord with what can be done and what is given it to do.”

“Choose not to be harmed—and you won't feel harmed. Don't feel harmed—and you haven't been. (Hays translation)”

“Remember this— that there is a proper dignity and proportion to be observed in the performance of every act of life.”

“The orators — and the despots — have the least power in their cities … since they do nothing that they wish to do, practically speaking, though they do whatever they think to be best.”

“Socrates: But suppose the words used are ‘just’ and ‘good’. Don’t we then go each his own way, and find ourselves in disagreement with ourselves as well as with each other? / Phaedrus: Undoubtedly.”

“There is no one who ever acts honestly in the administration of states, nor any helper who will save any one who maintains the cause of the just.”

“The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.”

“When you go to bed, don't leave bread or milk on the table: it attracts the dead.”

“If your daily life seems poor, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches; for to the creator there is no poverty and no poor indifferent place.”

“We are never without a pilot. When we know not how to steer, and dare not hoist a sail, we can drift. The current knows the way, though we do not. The ship of heaven guides itself, and will not accept a wooden rudder.”

“There is a freemasonry among the dull by which they recognize and are sociable with the dull, as surely as a correspondent tact in men of genius.”

“He needs no library, for he has not done thinking; no church, for he is himself a prophet; no statute book, for he hath the Lawgiver; no money, for he is value itself; no road, for he is at home where he is.”

“How we hate this solemn Ego that accompanies the learned, like a double, wherever he goes.”

“People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.”

“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”

“It is easy to live for others; everybody does. I call on you to live for yourselves.”

“Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact.”

“I had better never see a book than to be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system. The one thing in the world, of value, is the active soul.”

“Wherever Macdonald sits, there is the head of the table.”

“In the theory of the state of the seventeenth century, the monarch is identified with God and has in the state a position exactly analogous to that attributed to God in the Cartesian system of the world.”

“I do not know whether I shall make progress; but I should prefer to lack success rather than to lack faith.”

“I forbid you to be cast down or depressed. It is not enough if you do not shrink from work; ask for it.”

“One should never do wrong in return, nor mistreat any man, no matter how one has been mistreated by him.”

“God creates out of nothing. Wonderful you say. Yes, to be sure, but He does what is still more wonderful: He makes saints out of sinners.”

“The similarity between Christ and Socrates consists essentially in their dissimilarity. Just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony.”

“But Aversion wee have for things, not only which we know have hurt us; but also that we do not know whether they will hurt us, or not.”

“And Beasts that have Deliberation, must necessarily also have Will.”

“The Register of Knowledge of Fact is called History.”

“And as in other things, so in men, not the seller, but the buyer determines the Price.”

“As first a man cannot lay down the right of resisting them, that assault him by force, to take away his life; because he cannot be understood to ayme thereby, at any Good to himself.”

“Men looke not at the greatnesse of the evill past, but the greatnesse of the good to follow.”

“For naturall Bloud is in like manner made of the fruits of the Earth; and circulating, nourisheth by the way, every Member of the Body of Man.”

“No man's error becomes his own Law; nor obliges him to persist in it.”

“So that every Crime is a sinne; but not every sinne a Crime.”

“Fact be vertuous, or vicious, as Fortune pleaseth;”

“As also the great number of Corporations; which are as it were many lesser Common-wealths in the bowels of a greater, like wormes in the entrayles of a natural man.”

“Christian Kings may erre in deducing a Consequence, but who shall Judge?”

“But if it bee well considered, The praise of Ancient Authors, proceeds not from the reverence of the Dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the Living.”

“To understand this for sense it is not required that a man should be a geometrician or a logician, but that he should be mad.”

“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.”