Philosophy Quotes

"Evil acts of the past are never rectified by evil acts of the present."

- Lyndon B. Johnson, July 21, 1964

"Power … is not an end in itself, but is an instrument that must be used toward an end."

- Jeane J. Kirkpatrick

"If all power is in the people, if there is no higher law than their will, and if by counting their votes, their will may be ascertained—then the people may entrust all their power to anyone, and the power of the pretender and the usurper is then legitimate. It is not to be challenged since it came originally from the sovereign people."

- Walter Lippmann

"Wherever Law ends, Tyranny begins."

- John Locke, 1690

"The legislative cannot transfer the power of making laws to any other hands: for it being but a delegated power from the people, they who have it cannot pass it over to others."

- John Locke, Second Treatise of Government

"Pure democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths."

- James Madison, “Federalist 10”

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same hands, whether of one, a few or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

- James Madison

"A modern democracy is a tyranny whose borders are undefined; one discovers how far one can go only by traveling in a straight line until one is stopped."

- Norman Mailer

"War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed."

- William McKinley, March 4, 1897

"For forms of government let fools contest; Whate’er is best administered is best."

- Alexander Pope

"If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what state of starvation will you prefer the grain to a vote?"

- Bertrand Russell

"Democracy is the hole in the stuffed shirt through which the sawdust slowly trickles."

- E.B. White

"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time."

- E.B. White

"There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the body. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannizes over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People."

- Oscar Wilde

"Democracy is not so much a form of government as a set of principles."

- Woodrow Wilson

"Every friend of republican government ought to raise his voice against the sweeping denunciation of majority governments as the most tyrannical and intolerable of all governments. … The general question must be between a republican government in which the majority rule the minority, and a government in which a lesser number or the least number rule the majority. … Those who denounce majority government altogether … denounce at the time all republican government and must maintain that minority governments would feel less of the bias of interest or the seductions of powers."

- James Madison

"If majority governments … be the worst of governments, those who think and say so cannot be within the pale of the republican faith. They must either join the avowed disciples of aristocracy, oligarchy or monarchy, or look for a utopia exhibiting a perfect homogeneousness of interests, opinions and feelings nowhere yet to be found in civilized communities."

- James Madison

"Or is it your reputation that’s bothering you? But look at how soon we’re all forgotten. The abyss of endless time that swallows it all. The emptiness of those applauding hands. The people who praise us; how capricious they are, how arbitrary. And the tiny region it takes place. The whole earth a point in space – and most of it uninhabited."

- Marcus Aurelius

"To win true freeedom you must be a slave to philosophy."

- Seneca

"A single swallow does not make a summer."

- Aristotle

"Either God wants to abolish evil, and cannot; or he can, but does not want to."

- Epictetus

"Choose to die well while you can; wait too long, and it might become impossible to do so."

- Gaius Musonius Rufus

"Since every man dies, it is better to die with distinction than to live long."

- Gaius Musonius Rufus

"Events do not just happen, but arrive by appointment."

- Epictetus

"Being good is the same as being a philosopher. If you obey your father, you will follow the will of a man; if you choose the philosopher’s life, the will of the universe. It is plain, therefore, that your duty lies in the pursuit of philosophy."

- Gaius Musonius Rufus

"LIVE A GOOD LIFE. IF THERE ARE GODS AND THEY ARE JUST, THEN THEY WILL NOT CARE HOW DEVOUT YOU HAVE BEEN, BUT WILL WELCOME YOU BASED ON THE VIRTUES YOU HAVE LIVED BY. IF THERE ARE GODS, BUT UNJUST, THEN YOU SHOULD NOT WANT TO WORSHIP THEM. IF THERE ARE NO GODS, THEN YOU WILL BE GONE, BUT WILL HAVE LIVED A NOBLE LIFE THAT WILL LIVE ON IN THE MEMORIES OF YOUR LOVED ONES."

- Marcus Aurelius

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground."

- Thomas Jefferson

"To alcohol! The cause of... and solution to... all of life's problems."

- Homer Simpson

"A person gets from a symbol the meaning he puts into it."

- The United States Supreme Court

"Good morning! Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be."