Greek Philosopher Quotes - Page 4

• Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence.

  Aristotle

  Inspirational, Life, Happiness

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• My best friend is the man who in wishing me well wishes it for my sake.

  Aristotle

  Friendship, Best Friend, Fake Friends

  Aristotle (1953). “Ethics: The Nicomachean Ethics”

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  False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil.

  Plato

  Truth, Attitude, Lying

  Plato (2011). “The Final Days of Socrates: Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo”, p.136, Cosimo, Inc.

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• First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.

  Epictetus

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

  Epictetus (1807). “The Works of Epictetus: Consisting of His Discourses in Four Books Preserved by Arrian, the Enchiridion, and Fragments”, p.111

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• ...for the object of education is to teach us to love beauty.

  Plato

  Inspirational, Education, Philosophy

  Plato, Henry Desmond Pritchard Lee (1987). “The Republic”

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• There is far greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink.

  Plato

  Knowledge, Words Of Wisdom, Meat

  Plato (1977). “The Portable Plato”, p.38, Penguin

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• The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.

  Aristotle

  Science, Engineering, Order

  Aristotle (2012). “The Metaphysics”, p.202, Roger Bishop Jones

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• If measure and symmetry are absent from any composition in any degree, ruin awaits both the ingredients and the composition... Measure and symmetry are beauty and virtue the world over.

  Socrates

  Degrees, World, Ruins

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• My good friend, you are a citizen of Athens, a city which is very great and very famous for its wisdom and power - are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul?

  Plato

  Philosophical, Good Friend, Caring

  Plato (1949). “Euthyphro, Apology, and Crito, and the Death Scene from Phaedo”

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• People who want to understand democracy should spend less time in the library with Aristotle and more time on the buses and in the subway.

  Simeon Strunsky

  People, Democracy, Library

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• At this time is freedom anything but the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.

  Epictetus

  Freedom, Philosophical, Wish

  "Epictetus: the Discourses as reported by Arrian, the Manual, and fragments".

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• Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.

  Aristotle

  Love, Friendship, Family

  Aristotle, Aeterna Press (2015). “Eudemian Ethics”, p.69, Aeterna Press

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• Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others.

  Aristotle

  Motivational, Inspiring, Leadership

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• The pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Parmenides taught that the only things that are real are things which never change... and the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus taught that everything changes. If you superimpose their two views, you get this result: Nothing is real.

  Philip K. Dick

  Real, Views, Two

  Philip K. Dick (1995). “The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick: Selected Literary and Philosophical Writings”, Vintage

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• To find yourself, think for yourself.

  Socrates

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• I don't need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.

  Plutarch

  Friendship, Change, Philosophy

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• Man is the measure of all things.

  Protagoras

  Philosophical, Men, Greek

  Quoted in Plato, Theaetetus

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• Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.

  Democritus

  Motivational, Philosophy, Science

  Diogenes Laertius, vol.9.

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• No man undertakes a trade he has not learned, even the meanest; yet everyone thinks himself sufficiently qualified for the hardest of all trades, that of government.

  Socrates

  Men, Thinking, Hardest

  Socrates, Plato, Aristotle (1967). “Wit and Wisdom of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle: Being a Treasury of Thousands of Glorious, Inspiring and Imperishable Thoughts, Views and Observations of the Three Great Greek Philosophers, Classified Under about Four Hundred Subjects for Comparative Study”

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• Those whose hearts are fixed on Reality itself deserve the title of Philosophers.

  Plato

  Heart, Reality, Words Of Wisdom

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• To us it seems incredible that the Greek philosophers should have scanned so deeply into right and wrong and yet never noticed the immorality of slavery. Perhaps 3000 years from now it will seem equally incredible that we do not notice the immorality of our own oppression of animals.

  Brigid Brophy

  Equality, Animal, Should Have

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• It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

  Epicurus

  Confidence, Power, Men

  Epicurus (1964). “Letters: Principles Doctrines, and Vatican Sayings Translated, with an Introd. and Notes, by Russel M. Geor. Indianapolis Merrill”

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• The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living from the dead.

  Aristotle

  Life, Death, Education

  Aristotle (2015). “The Aristotle Collection [50 Books]”, Catholic Way Publishing

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• Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.

  Aristotle

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

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• I started asking the big questions that I had asked in college, that my compatriots the Greek philosophers had asked, like 'what is a good life?' Socrates famously said that 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' I started asking these questions from the starting point of 'what is success?'

  Arianna Huffington

  Good Life, College, Greek

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