Some Philosophical Quotations

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希望這些哲理名言可以引起各位思考的興趣。 :)


From "A Dictionary of Philosophical Quotations", edited by A. J. Ayer and Jane O'Grady, (Blackwell, 1992)

Also from Wikipedia.

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Socrates, Plato, Aristotle

Socrates: "The unexamined life is not worth living." (Plato, Apology, 38A)


Plato: "Philosophy begins in wonder." (Theaetetus, 155D)

Plato: "The true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things." (The Republic, 490A)


Aristotle: "A man is not a good man at all who feels no pleasure in noble actions, just as noone would call that man just who does not feel pleasure in acting justly..." (Nicomachean Ethics, 1099a)

Aristotle: "Trategy is a representation of action that is worhty of serious attention, complete in itself and of some magnitude - bringing about by means of pity and fear the purging of such emotions." (Poetics, 1449b)

Aristotle: "Comedy is an imitation of men worse than the average; worse, however, not as regards any and every sort of fault, but only as regards one particular kind, the ridiculous, which is a species of the ugly. The pain or harm to others; the mask, for instance, that excites laughter, is something ugly and distorted without causing pain." (Poetics, 1449a)

Aristotle: "The distinction between historian and poet is not in the one writing prose and the other verse - you might put the work of Herodutus into verse, and it would still be a species of history; it consists really in this, that the one describes the thing that has been, and the other a kind of things that might be. Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those of history are singulars." (Poetics, 1449a)

Aristotle: "We think we know each thing most fully when we know what it is, e.g., what man is or what fire is, rather than when we know its quality, its quantity, or where it is; since we know each of these things also, only when we know what the quantity or the quality is.

"And indeed the question which, both of new and of old, has always been raised, and always been the subject of doubt, viz., what being is, is just the question, what is substance?" (Metaphysics, 1028b)

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POST-CLASSICAL PHILOSOPHY

Cynics

Diogenes Laertius: "Either all that is held to be good by anyone must be said to be good or not all. But all cannot be said to be good since the same thing is held to be good by one person, for instance pleasure by Epicurus; and bad by another, Antisthenes. The consequence will be that the same thing is both good and bad. But if we do not admit that everything judged to be good by anyone is good, we shall have to distinguish between different opinions. This is impossible owing to the equal weight of arguments on both sides. Therefore that which is really good is unknowable."

Epicureanism

Epicurus: "We must not make a pretence of doing philosophy, but really doing it; for what we need is not the semblance of health but real health."

Epicurus: "We say that pleasure is the starting-point and the end of living blissfully. For we recognize pleasure as a good which is primary and innate. We begin every act of choice and avoidance from pleasure, and it is to pleasure that we return using our experience of pleasure as the criterion of every good thing" (Letter to Menoeceus)

Epicurus: "When we say that pleasure is the goal we do not mean the pleasures of the dissipated and those which consist in the process of enjoyment... but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the mind. For it is not drinking and continuous parties nor sexual pleasures nor the enjoyment of fish and other delicacies of a wealthy table which produce the pleasant life, but sober reasoning which searches out the causes of every act of choice and refusal and which banisches the opinions that give rise to the greatest mental confusion." (Letter to Menoeceus)

Stoicism

"Prior events are causes of those following them, and in this manner all things are bound together with one another, and thus nothing happens in the world such that something else is not entirely a consequence of it and attached to it as cause... From everything that happens something else follows depending on it by necessity as cause."

Zeno of Citium (the founder)

Cleanthes

Chrysippus

Epictetus

Marcus Aurelius

Cato

Seneca

Neo-Platonism (see below)


* These lists are not exhaustive.

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Plotinus: "Those divinely possessed and inspired have at least the knowledge that they hold some greater thing within them, though they cannot tell what it is; from the movements that stir them and the utterances that come from them they perceive the power, not themselves, that moves them: in the same way, it must be, we stand towars the Supreme when we hold nous pure; we know the Divine Mind within, that which gives Being and all else of that order: but we know, too, that other, know that it is none of these, but a nobler principle than anything we know as Being; fuller and greater; above reason, mind, and feeling; conferring these powers, not to be confounded with them. " (Enneads, V, 3.14)

Plotinus: "Many times it has happened: Lifed out of the body into myself; becoming external to all other things and self-encentred; beholding a marvellous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of community with the loftiest order; enacting the noblest life, acquiring identity with the divine; stationing within It by having attained that activity; poised above whatsoever in the Intellectual is than the Supreme: yet, there comes the moment of descent from intellection to reasoning, and after that sojourn in the divine, I ask myself how it happens that I can now be descending, and how did the Soul ever enter into my body, the Soul which even within the body, is the high thing it has shown itself to be." ( Enneads , IV, 8.1)

St. Augustine: "God is not the parent of evils... Evils exist by the voluntary sin of the soul to which God gave free choice. If one does not sin by will, one does not sin." (Contra Fortunatum Manichaeum, Acta seu Disputatio, Ch. 20)

St. Augustine: "Against these truths the arguments of the Academics are no terror, when they say, 'What if you are deceived?' For if I am deceived, I am. For one who is not, assuredly cannot be deceived; and because of this I am, if I am deceived. Because, therefore, I am if I am deceived, how am I deceived in thinking that I am, when it is certain that I am if I am deceived? Because, therefore, I who was deceived would be, even if I were deceived, it is beyond doubt that I am not decived in that I know myself to be." (City of God, Bk 11, Ch. 26)

St. Augustine: "Everyone who observes himself doubting observes a truth, and about that which he obbserves he is certain; therefore he is certain about a truth. Everyone therefore who doubts whether truth exists has in himself a truth on which not to doubt... Hence one who can doubt at all ought not to doubt about the existence of truth" (De Vera Religione, Ch. 39, No. 73)

St. Augustine: "But what is time? Who can explain it eaxily and briefly, or even, when he wants to speak of it, comprehend it in his thought? Yet is there anything we mention in our talking that is so well known and familiar? And we certainly understand when we say it, as we understand when we hear it said by someone else with whom we are talking. So what is time? If no one asks me, I know; if they ask and I try to explain, I do not know" (Confessions, Bk 11, Ch. 14, No. 17)

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Thomas Aquinas:

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PRESOCRATIC PHILOSOPHERS


The Miletus School

Thales: "That from which is everything that exists (τα οντα) and from which it first becomes (εκ ‘ου γιγνεται προτου) and into which it is rendered at last (eis ho phtheiretai teleutaion), its substance remaining under it, but transforming in qualities, that they say is the element and principle of things that are." (Aristotle, Metaphysics, 983 b 6)

Thales: "For it is necessary that there be some nature, either one or more than one, from which become the other things of the object being preserved... Thales says that it is water." (Aristotle, Metaphysics, 983 b 6)

"Thales", says Cicero, "assures that water is the principle of all things; and that God is that Mind which shaped and created all things from water." (Cicero:"De Nat. Deorum,"i.,10.)

The universal mind appears as a Roman belief in Virgil as well:
"In the beginning, SPIRIT within strengthens Heaven and Earth,
The watery fields, and the lucid globe of Lina, and then --
Titan stars; and mind infused through the limbs
Agitates the whole mass, and mixes itself with GREAT MATTER"
(Virgil:"Aeneid," vi., 724 ff.)

Anaximander

Anaximenes

The Pythagorean tradition

Pythagoras

Philolaus

Alcmaeon

Archytas

Timaeus

Heraclitus

Heraclitus: "It is not possible to step into the same river twice." (Plato, Cratylus, 402A)

Heraclitus: "The world order did none of gods or men make, but it always was and shall be: an everlasting fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures."

The Eleatic Tradition

Xenophanes: "But if cattle and horses or lions had hans, or were able to draw with their hands and do the works that men can do, horses would draw the forms of the gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make their bodies such as they each had themselves."

Xenophanes: "No man knows, or ever will know, the truth about the gods and about everything I speak of: for even if one chanced to say the complete truth, nevertheless one would not know it."


Parmenides: "Thinking and the thought that it is are the same; for you will not find thought apart from what is, in relation to which it is uttered."

Parmenides: For thought and being are the same. "

Parmenides: "How could what is perish? How could it have come to be? For if it came into being, it is not; nor is it if ever it is going to be. Thus coming into being is extinguished, and destruction unknown."

Parmenides: "[What exists] is now, all at once, one and continuous... Nor is it divisible, since it is all alike; nor is there any more or less of it in one place which might prevent it from holding together, but all is full of what is."

Zeno of Elea: "The first [argument] asserts the non-existence of motion on the ground that that which is in locomotion must arrive at the half-way stage before it arrives at the goal..." (Aristotle, Physics, 239 B 11)

Zeno of Elea: "The second is the so-called Achilles, and it amounts to this, that in a race the quickest runner can never overtake the slowest, since the pursuer must first reach the point whence the pursued started, so that the slower must always hold a lead." (Aristotle, Physics, 239 B 20)

Zeno of Elea: "The third amounts to this, that the flying arrow is at rest. This result follows when one assumes that time is made up of moments." (Aristotle, Physics, 239 B 30)

Melissus of Samos

Democritus

Democritus

The Sophists

Protagoras

Gorgias

Prodicus

Hippias