Greek Philosophy Quotes

[I]ndeed, one hears, in early Christian theology, as many echoes of Persian dualism as of Hebrew Puritanism or Greek philosophy. ~ Will Durant

The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows. ~ Socrates

The Alexandrian School In opposition to the previously named Church Fathers, the Alexandrians openly embraced Greek philosophy, thought of it as being of divine origin, and brought its allegorizing technique into their exegesis. ~ Anonymous

The term Greek philosophy, to begin with is a misnomer, for there is no such philosophy in existence. The ancient Egyptians had developed a very complex religious system, called the Mysteries, which was also the first system of salvation. As such, it regarded the human body as a prison house of the soul, which could be liberated from its bodily impediments, through the disciplines of the Arts and Sciences, and advanced from the level of a mortal to that of a God. ~ George G. M. James

Leaving him and going out into the paint-fuming air I had the feeling that I had been talking beyond myself, had used words and expressed attitudes not my own, that I was in the grip of some alien personality lodged deep within me. Like the servant about whom I'd read in psychology class who, during a trance, had recited pages of Greek philosophy which she had overheard one day while she worked. It was as though I were acting out a scene from some crazy movie. Or perhaps I was catching up with myself and had put into words feelings which I had hitherto suppressed. Or was it, I thought, starting up the walk, that I was no longer afraid? I stopped, looking at the buildings down the bright street slanting with sun and shade. I was no longer afraid. Not of important men, not of trustees and such; for knowing now that there was nothing which I could expect from them, there was no reason to be afraid. Was that it? I felt light-headed, my ears were ringing. I went on. ~ Ralph Ellison

I never thought Greek philosophy could make a damn bit of sense to me. And most of it didn't, but those words just seemed right. 'Love is composed of a single soul, inhabiting two bodies.'" He took her by the shoulders drawing her close. "It rang true for me, in a way nothing else did. Whatever soul I had, Katie, I think I placed it in your keeping twenty years ago. And now, it's as if ... every time we kiss, you give a little piece of it back. ~ Tessa Dare

line. Creativity is a response to our environment. Greek painting was a response to the complex light (the Greek painter Apollodoros was the first to develop a technique for creating the illusion of depth), Greek architecture a response to the complex landscape, Greek philosophy a response to the complex, uncertain times. The problem with paradise is that it is perfect and therefore requires no response. This is why wealthy people and places often stagnate. Athens ~ Eric Weiner

The causes which ruined the Republic of Athens illustrate the connection of ethics with politics rather than the vices inherent to democracy. A State which has only 30,000 full citizens in a population of 500,000, and is governed, practically, by about 3000 people at a public meeting, is scarcely democratic. The short triumph of Athenian liberty, and its quick decline, belong to an age which possessed no fixed standard of right and wrong. An unparalleled activity of intellect was shaking the credit of the gods, and the gods were the givers of the law. It was a very short step from the suspicion of Protagoras, that there were no gods, to the assertion of Critias that there is no sanction for laws. If nothing was certain in theology, there was no certainty in ethics and no moral obligation. The will of man, not the will of God, was the rule of life, and every man and body of men had the right to do what they had the means of doing. Tyranny was no wrong, and it was hypocrisy to deny oneself the enjoyment it affords. The doctrine of the Sophists gave no limits to power and no security to freedom; it inspired that cry of the Athenians, that they must not be hindered from doing what they pleased, and the speeches of men like Athenagoras and Euphemus, that the democracy may punish men who have done no wrong, and that nothing that is profitable is amiss. And Socrates perished by the reaction which they provoked. ~ John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

Socrates is a shining example of a man who bravely lived up to his ideals, and, in the end, bravely died for them. Throughout his life, he never lost faith in the mind's ability to discern and decide, and so to apprehend and master reality. Nor did he ever betray truth and integrity for a pitiable life of self-deception and semi-consciousness. In seeking relentlessly to align mind with matter and thought with fact, he remained faithful both to himself and to the world, with the result that he is still alive in this sentence and millions of others that have been written about him. More than a great philosopher, Socrates was the living embodiment of the dream that philosophy might one day set us free. ~ Neel Burton

No I do not like blaming. Because for me it's enough
if someone is other than bad - not too much out of hand,
conscious at least of the justice that helps the city,
a healthy man. No I shall not
lay blame. Because fools
are a species that never ends.
All things, you know, are beautiful with which
ugly things are not mixed. ~ Simonides Of Ceos

I refer to the Gospel account in which Christ weeps at the grave of his friend Lazarus. We need to pause and consider the meaning of these tears, for in this very moment there occurs a unique transformation within religion in relation to the long-standing religious approach to death.

Up to this moment the purpose of religion, as well as the purpose of philosophy, consisted in enabling man to come to terms with death, and if possible even to make death desirable: death as the liberation from suffering; death as freedom from this changing, busy, evil world; death as the beginning of eternity. Here, in fact, is the sum total of religious and philosophical teaching before Christ and outside of Christianity - in primitive religions, in Greek philosophy, in Buddhism, and so forth. But Christ *weeps* at the grave of his friend, and in so doing his own struggle with death, his refusal to acknowledge it and to come to terms with it. Suddenly, death ceases to be a normal and natural fact, it appears as something foreign, as unnatural, as fearsome and perverted, and it is acknowledged as an enemy: 'The last enemy to be destroyed is death. ~ Alexander Schmemann

The Greek philosophies teach us that we are a combination of dark and light, good and evil, and murderer and savior, hmm? And until we know this completely about ourselves we cannot love well, and we cannot forgive ourselves. ~ Ray Bradbury

The number 6 was the first perfect number, and the number of creation. The adjective "perfect" was attached that are precisely equal to the sum of all the smaller numbers that divide into them, as 6=1+2+3. The next such number, incidentally, is 28=1+2+4+7+14, followed by 496=1+2+4+8+16+31+62+124+248; by the time we reach the ninth perfect number, it contains thirty-seven digits. Six is also the product of the first female number, 2, and the first masculine number, 3. The Hellenistic Jewish philosopher Philo Judaeus of Alexandria (ca. 20 B.C.-c.a. A.D. 40), whose work brought together Greek philosophy and Hebrew scriptures, suggested that God created the world in six days because six was a perfect number. The same idea was elaborated upon by St. Augustine (354-430) in The City of God: "Six is a number perfect in itself, and not because God created the world in six days; rather the contrary is true: God created the world in six days because this number is perfect, and it would remain perfect, even if the work of the six days did not exist." Some commentators of the Bible regarded 28 also as a basic number of the Supreme Architect, pointing to the 28 days of the lunar cycle. The fascination with perfect numbers penetrated even into Judaism, and their study was advocated in the twelfth century by Rabbi Yosef ben Yehudah Ankin in his book, Healing of the Souls. ~ Mario Livio

The God of St. Thomas and Dante is a God Who loves, the god of Aristotle is a god who does not refuse to be loved; the love that moves the heavens and the stars in Aristotle is the love of the heavens and the stars for god, but the love that moves them in St. Thomas and Dante is the love of God for the world; between these two motive causes there is all the difference between an efficient cause on the one hand, and a final cause on the other. ~ Etienne Gilson

The Republic isn't as much fun as The Symposium. It's all long speeches, and nobody bursting in drunk to woo Socrates in the middle. ~ Jo Walton

The working concept of God for most ordinary Christians is - if one may venture a bold guess- shaped more by the combination of Greek philosophy and Islamic
theology that was powerfully injected into the thought of Christendom at the beginning of the High Middle Ages than by the thought of the fathers of the first four centuries. ~ Lesslie Newbigin

The classical heritage as shaped by and filtered through Roman culture had two great flaws. First, it prevented the very rich oral cultures of the ancient Mediterranean from surviving from antiquity into later times. All that was left as creative forces were Greek philosophy and Roman law. These were very substantial cultures but they represented a great narrowing of what could be passed on from antiquity to later centuries...
"Second, another deficiency of classical culture was its lack of social conscience, its obliviousness to the slavery, poverty, disease, and everyday cruelty endured by more than half of the fifty million people who inhabited the empire. The classical heritage represented a narrow and insensitive social and political theory reinforcing a miserably class-ridden and technologically stagnant society. ~ Norman F. Cantor

There seems to be an inborn drive in all human beings not to live in a steady emotional state, which would suggest that such a state is not tolerable to most people. Why else would someone succumb to the attractions of romantic love more than once? Didn't they learn their lesson the first time or the tenth time or the twentieth time? And it's the same old lesson: everything in this life - I repeat, everything - is more trouble than it's worth. And simply being alive is the basic trouble. This is something that is more recognized in Eastern societies than in the West. There's a minor tradition in Greek philosophy that instructs us to seek a state of equanimity rather than one of ecstasy, but it never really caught on for obvious reasons. Buddhism advises its practitioners not to seek highs or lows but to follow a middle path to personal salvation from the painful cravings of the average sensual life, which is why it was pretty much reviled by the masses and mutated into forms more suited to human drives and desires. It seems evident that very few people can simply sit still. Children spin in circles until they collapse with dizziness. ~ Thomas Ligotti

Rumors and reports of man's relation with animals are the world's oldest news stories, headlined in the stars of the zodiac, posted on the walls of prehistoric caves, inscribed in the languages of Egyptian myth, Greek philosophy, Hindu religion, Christian art, our own DNA. Belonging within the circle of mankind's intimate acquaintance ... constant albeit speechless companions, they supplied energies fit to be harnessed or roasted. ~ Lewis H. Lapham

He had learned how to assemble Jewish texts, Greek philosophy, and Middle-Western evangelistic anecdotes into a sermon. And he had learned that poverty was blessed, but that bankers make the best deacons. ~ Sinclair Lewis

The key stone of Westem civilization is the sphere of spontaneous action it secures to the individual. There have always been attempts to curb the individuais initiative, but the power of the persecutors and inquisitors has not been absolute. It could not prevent the rise of Greek philosophy and its Roman offshoot or the development of modem science and philosophy. Driven by their inborn genius, pioneers have accomplished their work in spite of ali hostility and opposition. The innovator did not have to wait for invitation or order from anybody. He could step forward of his own accord and defy traditional teachings. In the orbit of ideas the West has by and large always enjoyed the blessings of freedom.
Then came the emancipation of the individual in the field of business, an achievement of that new branch of philosophy, economics. A free hand was given to the enterprising man who knew how to enrich his fellows by improving the methods of production. A horn of plenty was poured upon the common men by the capitalistic business principie of mass production for the satisfaction of the needs of the masses. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

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

Which was why the Sadducees in particular were so infuriated with this sect, Ezra realized. The Sadducees were convinced the afterlife did not exist at all. Man lived, man died. The candle was snuffed out. Finished. A very Greek philosophy, it was one that found favor only with the highly educated, the rich, the well traveled. The average Judean despised the Sadducees for this and for how they had allied themselves with the Romans. ~ Janette Oke

Like mythology, Greek philosophy has a tendency to personify ideas. And the Sophist is not merely a teacher of rhetoric for a fee of one or fifty drachmae (Crat.), but an ideal of Plato's in which the falsehood of all mankind is reflected. ~ Plato

Even today many educated people think that the victory of Christianity over Greek philosophy is a proof of the superior truth of the former - although in this case it was only the coarser and more violent that conquered the more spiritual and delicate. So far as superior truth is concerned, it is enough to observe that the awakening sciences have allied themselves point by point with the philosophy of Epicurus, but point by point rejected Christianity. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

We may say, in a broad way, that Greek philosophy down to Aristotle expresses the mentality appropriate to the City State; that Stoicism is appropriate to a cosmopolitan despotism; that stochastic philosophy is an intellectual expression of the Church as an organization; that philosophy since Descartes, or at any rate since Locke, tends to embody the prejudices of the commercial middle class; and that Marxism and Fascism are the philosophies appropriate to the modern industrial state. ~ Bertrand Russell

I do not admit that theological points are small points. Theology is only thought applied to religion; and those who prefer a thoughtless religion need not be so very disdainful of others with a more rationalistic taste. The old joke that the Greek sects only differed about a single letter is about the lamest and most illogical joke in the world. An atheist and a theist only differ by a single letter; yet theologians are so subtle as to distinguish definitely between the two. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Love taught me to die with dignity that I might come forth anew in splendor. Born once of flesh, then again of fire, I was reborn a third time to the sound of my name humming haikus in heaven's mouth. ~ Aberjhani

I take very few people seriously, and I'm not one of them. ~ Cian Beirdd

The best things in life are crazy. ~ Emme Rollins

The wise man realistically accepts as part of life and builds a philosophy to meet them and make the most of them. He lives on the principle of nothing attempted, nothing gained and is resolved that if he fails he is going to fail while trying to succeed. ~ Bill Vaughan

The animals themselves are incapable of demanding their own liberation, or of protesting against their condition with votes, demonstrations, or bombs. Human beings have the power to continue to oppress other species forever, or until we make this planet unsuitable for living beings. Will our tyranny continue, proving that we really are the selfish tyrants that the most cynical of poets and philosophers have always said we are? Or will we rise to the challenge and prove our capacity for genuine altruism by ending our ruthless exploitation of the species in our power, not because we are forced to do so by rebels or terrorists, but because we recognize that our position is morally indefensible? The way in which we answer this question depends on the way in which each one of us, individually, answers it. ~ Peter Singer

It's not about Indians, it's about people... the overall philosophy is to reconnect all people to nature and inevitably themselves. - Larry Stillday ~ Michael Meuers

Even if (as I myself believe) almost all Hegel's doctrines are false, he still retains an importance which is not merely historical, as the best representative of a certain kind of philosophy which, in others, is less coherent and less comprehensive. ~ Bertrand Russell

He is the richest who is content with the least. ~ Socrates

In fact, scientists have taken advantage of this effect by using the amount of red in contemporary paintings of sunsets to estimate the intensity of volcanic eruptions. Several Greek scientists, led by C. S. Zerefos, digitally measured the amount of red - relative to other primary colors - in more than 550 samples of landscape art by 181 artists from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries to produce estimates of the amount of volcanic ash in the air at various times. Paintings from the years following the Tambora eruption used the most red paint; those after Krakatoa came a close second. ~ William K. Klingaman

Writing comes from the fear of failure not from the joy of winning. ~ Debasish Mridha

supernatural, and my own rational philosophy is founded on proven science. But I still believe in hell." The dark man smiled. "For every man manufactures his own private hell and peoples it with demons of his own creation, to torment him for his own secret sins, imagined or real. It's my business to explore those personal hells and expose their demons for what they are. Usually they turn out to be much less terrifying than they seem. ~ Jack Williamson

Be kind. Be compassionate, and above all, be simple. ~ Debasish Mridha

Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future too. ~ Marcus Aurelius

The real desire [of feminism] is to break away from rationalism, androcentrisim and all forms of philosophy and practices that discriminate against women. The objective is to recover the use of senses, desire, taste, pleasure, pain and the mystery of life. It is a point of view which seeks to reflet with the body, that is, with sensitivity, with sexuality and, finally, with the story of the body itself. ~ Valmar Da Silva in Reading Other-Wise p. 125 ~ Gerald O. West

Your hardest time will be the most memorable time of your life if you can endure it. ~ Debasish Mridha

What you expect, it will find the way to appear. ~ Debasish Mridha

To understand the universe, look deep into your heart. ~ Debasish Mridha

A vigilante is just a man lost in the scramble for his own gratification. He can be destroyed or locked up. But if you make yourself more than just a man, if you devote yourself to an ideal, and if they can't stop you, then you become something else entirely ~ Christopher J. Nolan

It seems that rather than abandon their worldview, many young people are abandoning their lives altogether. I am disturbed to see the number of suicides and suicide attempts by those between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five. Many of their suicide notes report they had lost meaning, purpose and a sense that life held any value.

This is no longer just about philosophy. This is about the very real lives we are all trying to make sense of here on Earth. ~ Jon Morrison

the illusion is encouraged that philosophy is an irrelevant, abstract subject - part of the decoration of a cultured life perhaps, but unnecessary in and even distracting from the activities of the practical world. The truth is, however, that all nontrivial activity presupposed some philosophical point of view and that not to recognize this is to make oneself the ready victim of bad or at the very least inadequate philosophy. ~ Michael Macintyre

A loving heart is the source of all happiness. ~ Debasish Mridha

The most pleasant surprise is to get lost in the beauty of life. ~ Debasish Mridha

Tell me what a man finds sexually attractive and I will tell you his entire philosophy of life. Show me the woman he sleeps with and I will tell you his valuation of himself. ~ Ayn Rand

Trying is something we do when we think we can't do something. Even if your doing is not as perfect as you would like, decide to do it, and you will.
Lady Nimrod of Buckmore in The Princelings and the Lost City ~ Jemima Pett

You'll argue he was just
Putting into practice
The philosophy of eye for eye.
Say what you will.
I don't mind:
But now we know
Why Justice is blind. ~ David Elliott

Your scent may be exquisite, but it's telling me that you're poison. ~ Anthony T. Hincks

When a man learns to love, he must bear the risk of hatred. ~ Masashi Kishimoto

Some people think that macrobiotic philosophy is no more than the teaching of a diet - the eating of brown rice, carrots, and gomashio (sesame salt), others imagine that it is summed up in the statement, "Don't eat cake and sugar." How far from the truth! ~ George Ohsawa

Be unique. Be different. Be yourself. ~ Debasish Mridha

A poet is an unpaid laborer of a mine where he digs into the mountain to find rough diamonds. He then polishes them with his imagination and emotion to share with everyone. ~ Debasish Mridha

Do your best; don't worry about the results of your test. ~ Debasish Mridha

She is often the broken-winged one, who does everything all wrong until people realize she's been doing it ... pretty right all along. She's the poor girl who never dressed right, who had torn hose, and they were all baggy around her ankles. She's the Raggedy Ann of the sophisticated world, who pulls it out at the last minute, flies by the seat of her pants, cackling all the way home. She is the late bloomer, the late start, the autumn bush, the winter holly. She is Baubo, all the classical Greek goddesses. She is the old girl who still blushes, and laughs, and dances. She's the truth teller, maybe that people hate to hear, but they learn to listen to. She is not dumb and in some ways is not shrewd. She works on passion, and the doll in her pocket, and the intuition that leads her into and through all the world. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

My philosophy is my learning process. Until you die, you must evolve and improve. ~ Miyavi

You should never try and out guess Mother Nature because when you do, you come off second best. ~ Anthony T. Hincks

He would write it for the reason he felt that all great literature, fiction and nonfiction, was written: truth comes out, in the end it always comes out. He would write it because he felt he had to. ~ Stephen King