1 Philosophers and Thinkers

Laozi (Lao Tsu)

Laozi, Chinese thinker of the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BCE), founder of the philosophical system of Taoism.

The Dao that can be trodden is not the enduring and unchanging Dao. The name that can be named is not the enduring and unchanging name. (Conceived of as) having no name, it is the Originator of heaven and earth; (conceived of as) having a name, it is the Mother of all things.

Confucius

Confucius (551–479 BCE), clan (family) name Kong, given name Qiu, and courtesy name Zhongni; Chinese thinker, educator, and statesman of the Spring and Autumn Period (770–476 BCE), founder of the philosophical system of Confucianism.

Even when walking in the company of two other men, I am bound to be able to learn from them. I will select their good qualities and follow them, their bad qualities and avoid them.

Socrates

Socrates (469–399 BCE), ancient Greek philosopher.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Plato

Plato (427–347 BCE), ancient Greek philosopher, founder of the philosophical system of Platonism.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

Aristotle

Aristotle (384–322 BCE), ancient Greek philosopher.

It is our choice of good or evil that determines our character, not our opinion about good or evil.

Zhuangzi

Zhuangzi (Chuang-Tsu, c.a. 369–286 BCE), Chinese philosopher of the Warring States Period (475–221 BCE).

There is a limit to our life, but to knowledge there is no limit.

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus

Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121–180), ancient Roman emperor (161-180).

Time is a river, a violent current of events, glimpsed once and already carried past us, and another follows and is gone.

Wang Yangming

Wang Shouren, styled Yangming (1472–1529), philosopher of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644).

Sages are called sages simply because their minds are as pure as the heavenly principle, not mixed with selfish human desire. It is for the same reason why pure gold is pure—because it contains no other metals such as copper and lead. A man with a mind as pure as the heavenly principle can be called a sage, in the same way gold containing no other substances can be called pure.

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon (1561–1626), British philosopher, pioneer of British materialism and modern experimental science.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

Descartes

René Descartes (1596–1650), French philosopher, physicist, mathematician, physiologist.

Cogito, ergo sum. I think, therefore I am.

Montesquieu

Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu (1689–1755), French thinker of the Enlightenment, jurist.

Liberty is the freedom to do what a man should do, and the freedom from being forced to do what he should not do.

Voltaire

Voltaire (1694–1778), François Marie Arouet, French thinker, writer, and philosopher of the Enlightenment.

Life is thickly sown with thorns, and I know no other remedy than to pass quickly through them. The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.

Goethe

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), German poet, dramatist, and thinker.

Courage is the commitment to begin without any guarantee of success.

Schopenhauer

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860), German philosopher, voluntarist.

Life swings like a pendulum to and fro between pain and boredom, and these two are in fact its ultimate constituents.

John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), British philosopher, economist, and logician.

In the present age—which has been described as “destitute of faith, but terrified at skepticism” in which people feel sure, not so much that their opinions are true, as that they should not know what to do without them—the claims of an opinion to be protected from public attack are rested not so much on its truth, as on its importance to society.

Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), German philosopher, one of the major representatives of voluntarism and Lebensphilosophie.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under.

Bergson

Henri Bergson (1859–1941), French philosopher, one of the major representatives of Lebensphilosophie and Institutionalism, initiator of creative evolution.

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.

Liang Qichao

Liang Qichao (1873–1929), Chinese scholar, leader of the modern reform movement.

After drinking icy water for ten years to cool myself down, my blood is still boiling.

Heidegger

Martin Heidegger (1889–1976), German philosopher, one of the major representatives of existentialism.

And because Dasein is always essentially its possibility, it can“choose” itself in its being, it can win itself, it can lose itself, or it can never and only “apparently” win itself.

Wittgenstein

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951), British philosopher, logician.

In logic process and result are equivalent.

Hu Shi

Hu Shi (1891–1962), Chinese scholar.

The only principle we must uphold in the fight for liberty is: those who oppose us may not be wrong, and those who agree with us may not be right; what everyone endorses today may not be true, and what everyone opposes today may not be untrue.

Walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), German philosopher, aesthetician, one of the major representatives of Western Marxism.

There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism.

Marcuse

Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979), philosopher, one of the major representatives of the Frankfurt School.

A one-dimensional man is a man who has lost the ability to dissent, criticize and transcend. Such a man no longer has the ability to pursue, or even to imagine another life that is different from the life in reality.

Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980), French writer, philosopher, one of the major representatives of existentialism.

Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.

Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), 20th-century thinker, political theorist.

Good can be radical; evil can never be radical, it can only be extreme, for it possesses neither depth nor any demonic dimension yet—and this is its horror—it can spread like a fungus over the surface of the earth and lay waste the entire world.

Isaiah Berlin

Isaiah Berlin (1909–1997), British philosopher and historian of political thoughts.

Romanticism is the primitive, the untutored, it is youth, the exuberant sense of life… It is Shelley’s dome of many-coloured glass, and it is also his white radiance of eternity. It is confused teeming fullness and richness of life, Fülle des Lebens…

Camus

Albert Camus (1913–1960), French philosopher, one of the major representatives of existentialism.

The habit of despair is worse than despair itself.

Deleuze

Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995), French philosopher, postmodernist.

Something in the world forces us to think. This something is an object not of recognition but of a fundamental encounter.

Foucault

Michel Foucault (1926–1984), French philosopher, historian, one of the representatives of structuralism.

Man would be erased, like a face drawn in sand at the edge of the sea.

Derrida

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), French philosopher, one of the representatives of post-structuralism.

A path…silent as death and resonating with all the powers of voice which it holds in reserve…