100 splendid quotes, a selection of 100 great aphorisms by famous authors, philosophers and artists through the centuries to help everyone create better thoughts and achieve good actions; edited for the World of English blog by Carl William Brown, a sincere literary avenger. (Find out more about him on Amazon).
Awareness and stupidity are unfortunately two sides of the same coin, just like life and death, laughter and tears, comedy and tragedy, wealth and poverty, peace and war; but with these coins it is very difficult, if not impossible, to play heads or tails and tempt fate.
Carl William Brown
Excellence withers without an adversary.
Seneca
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.
William Shakespeare
Love is a state in which a man sees things most decidedly as they are not.
Friedrich Nietzsche
The contradiction of capitalism is that it creates wealth while increasing poverty.
Karl Marx
I hate victims that respect their executioners.
Jean Paul Sartre
Focus on knowledge, live authentically, challenge limits, and align your soul with truth.
Socrates
The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.
Epicurus
A snake can change its skin but not its disposition.
Persian proverb
Stupidity generally serves both those who do not think much and those who think too much and badly.
Carl William Brown
The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world. The bird flies to God. That God’s name is Abraxas.”
Hermann Hesse
No man is good by chance. Virtue is something which must be learned.
Seneca
When your education limit your imagination, it is called indoctrination.
Richard Feynman
We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.
Heinrich Heine
Whenever two people meet, there are really six people present: each man as he sees himself, each man as the other person sees him, and each man as he really is.
William James
Excellence is achieved through repeated effort, guided by reason and effort.
Aristotle
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.
William Shakespeare
All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.
Mark Twain
Happy slaves are the worst enemies of freedom.
Marie von Ebner
The quickest way to end a war is to loose it.
George Orwell
The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Raise your words, not voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.
Rumi
The wise don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.
Benjamin Franklin
If someone succeeds in provoking you, realize that your mind is complicit in the provocation.
Epictetus
A person hears only what he understand or better what he believe to understand.
Carl William Brown
Good and ethic power should be the ability to do good for othes, otherwise power in itself is just only stupidity.
Carl William Brown
If you want to reach a large audience, appeal to idiots.
Arthur Schopenhauer
There is no greater good than knowledge.
Plato
Even a writer of aphorisms, if he does not know the philosophical secret of the right measure, will only contribute to the miserable prolixity of stupidity.
Carl William Brown
The highest for of love is the love of wisdom.
Plato
Those who tell the stories also rule society.
Plato
Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy.
Sadi of Shiraz
One must never miss an opportunity of quoting things by others which are always more interesting than those one thinks up oneself.
Marcel Proust
The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it. Power is what all messiahs really seek: not the chance to serve. This is true even of the pious brethren who carry the gospel to foreign parts.
H.L. Mencken
The community should share property and family to create unity.
Plato
Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.
Otto von Bismarck
Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.
Winston Churchill
The brighter the light, the darker the shadow.
Carl G. Jung
It is to difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.
jean Jacques Rousseau
Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers.
Voltaire
The body is the prison of the soul.
Plato
Love is silence, and it has no past or future.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
It is frightful that people who are so ignorant have so much influence.
George Orwell
In a war of Ego, the loser always wins.
Buddha
Make a habit of two things – to help, or at least, to do no harm.
Hippocrates
As usual, there is a great woman behind every idiot.
John Lennon
Knowledge is the food of the soul.
Plato
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ten beggars can sleep on one rug, but two kings feel uncomfortable in one country.
Saadi
An intellectual is a person who has found a thing that is more interesting than sex.
Aldous Huxley
We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.
Heinrich Heine
Happiness is not achieved by pursuing pleasure but by embracing purpose.
Epictetus
Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.
Benjamin Franklin
Let your actions align with your words.
Epictetus
What I advice you to do is not to be unhappy before the crisis comes.
Seneca
The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength.
Marcus Aurelius
Better a civil or a world war, even a nuclear one, than having to put up with the stupidity of those who govern this planet, the shithole toilet of the universe.
Carl William Brown
The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
John Milton
The mind can make a heaven of hell, or a hell of heaven.
Marcus Aurelius
Common sense is the most widely shared commodity in the world, for every man is convinced that he is well supplied with it.
René Descartes
The purpose of education is to empower individuals to think critically.
John Locke
For the world is Hell, and men are on the one hand the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it.
Arthur Schopenhauer
How can great minds be produced in a country where the test of a great mind is agreeing in the opinions of small minds?
John Stuart Mill
Wickedness is paid for in the next world, but stupidity in this one.
Arthur Schopenhauer
I have never believed that man’s freedom consisted in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.
Confucius
A concept is a brick. It can be used to build a courthouse of reason. Or it can be thrown through the window.
Gilles Deleuze
Not to be absolutely certain is one of the essential things in rationality.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Philosophy is the art of forming, inventing, and fabricating concepts that respond to problems.
Gilles Deleuze
Chi pensa non crede, chi crede non pensa.
Arthur Shopenhauer
Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.
Vicktor Frankl
The essence of evil is its refusal to think.
Hannah Arendt
To find fault is easy; to do better may be difficult.
Plutarch
True philosophy begins where pleasure ends and discipline begins.
Plato
A corrupt state teaches its youth obedicence, not virtue.
Lucis Annaeus Seneca
I swear to you, gentlemen, that being too conscious is a disease, a real, absolute disease.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.
Lucius Annaeus Seneca
I swear to you, gentlemen, that being too conscious is a disease, a real, absolute disease.
Fyodor Dostoevsky
I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.
Blaise Pascal
Once upon a time, watching some American films, we said that our people were coming, today at most we can only say that the idiots are coming.
Carl William Brown
The common people are always seduced by appearance and success.
Niccolò Macchiavelli
To accuse others for one’s own misfortune is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.
Epictetus
The superior man always thinks of virtue, the common man thinks of comfort.
Confucius
A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
George Bernard Shaw
The more we value things outside our control, the less control we have.
Epictetus
Happiness is not achieved by the conscious pursuit of happiness; it is generally the by-product of other activities.
Aldous Huxley
There is only one way to happiness and that is to cease worrying about things which are beyond the power of our will.
Epictetus
Books weigh a lot: and yet, those who feed on them and put them in their bodies, live among the clouds.
Luigi Pirandello
A lie is more comfortable than doubt, more useful than love, more lasting than truth.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Often injustice lies in what you aren’t doing, not only in what you are doing.
Marcus Aurelius
Since the little wit that fools have was silenced, the little foolery that wise men have makes a great show.
William Shakespeare
Nothing can be loved or hated unless it is first understood.
Leonardo da Vinci
Humanity does not need artificial intelligence if imbecility still dominates deep within its nature.
Carl William Brown
Slept, awoke, slept, awoke, miserable life.
Franz Kafka
All war is a crime against humanity.
Leo Tolstoy
Happy slaves are the bitterest enemies of freedom.
Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach
It is better to change an opinion than to persist in a wrong one.
Socrates
The hardest thing to learn in life is which bridge to cross and which to burn.
Bertrand Russell
By all means marry: if you get a good wife or husband, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad wife or husband, you’ll become a philosopher.
Socrates
If you wish to be rich, do not add to your money, but subtruct from your desires.
Epicurus
The more unintelligent a man is, the less mysterious existence seems to him.
Arthur Schopenhauer
To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.
Jean-Paul Sartre
Don’t miss these other similar posts:
Great inspirational quotes and aphorisms
Great motivational quotes and aphorisms
100 outstanding quotes and aphorisms
100 golden quotes and aphorisms
100 awesome quotes and aphorisms
100 wonderful quotes and aphorisms
100 admirable quotes and aphorisms
100 magnificent quotes and aphorisms
100 brilliant quotes and aphorisms
100 famous quotes and aphorisms
100 memorable quotes and aphorisms
100 excellent quotes and aphorisms
100 top great quotes and aphorisms
100 superlative quotes and aphorisms
100 super worthy quotes and aphorisms
Great and famous philosophy quotes
