The Key to Life: In 365 Quotes

1. A casual stroll through the lunatic asylum shows that faith does not prove anything.

Friedrich Nietzsche

2. A cat may look at a king.

John Heywood

3. A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.

Victor Hugo

4. A principle assumption held as fact on which decisions are based, while a doctrine is a fundamental belief how to act.

5. A tree that falls in a forest with noone around makes no sound, because it uses less energy.

6. At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is.

T. S. Eliot

7. Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what is a heaven for?

Robert Browning

8. At the end of your life, you get into an Uber. Who's the driver? It's you. You look back at yourself and say, 'Hey! Great life! You're not going to remember anything, but onto the next one.

9. After the game the king and the pawn go in the same box.

Proverb

10. And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

Proverb

11. All is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

Voltaire

12. Art is a way to avoid dying from truths. By engaging in it, we can create something that is not true and thus prevent ourselves from being overwhelmed by the sheer magnitude of reality.

Friedrich Nietzsche

13. Destiny gives a sense of familiarity.

14. Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.

William Johnson Neale

15. Do not leave anything not where it's supposed to be.

16. Empty your mind. Be formless. Shapeless. Like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

Bruce Lee

17. Everyone calls himself a friend, but only a fool relies on it; nothing is commoner than the name, nothing rarer than the thing.

François de La Rochefoucauld

18. Famous last words: 'I go to seek a Great Perhaps.' That's why I'm going. So I don't have to wait until I die to start seeking a Great Perhaps.

John Green

19. Evil is the force that believes its knowledge is complete.

Jordan Peterson

20. Everything that exists is born for no reason, carries on living through weakness and dies by accident.

Jean-Paul Sartre

21. Existence precedes essence.

Jean-Paul Sartre

22. Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of one's desires, but by the removal of desire.

Epictetus

23. Free will is only possible with something bigger than you.

24. Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.

Mahatma Gandhi

25. God is dead, God remains dead and we have killed him.

Friedrich Nietzsche

26. God is man's greatest idea.

Camille Paglia

27. He who is not satisfied with a little, is satisfied with nothing.

Epicurus

28. He who lives by the sword, dies by the sword.

The Bible

29. Heaven and hell exists, but it's here on earth.

30. I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

31. I once asked Shrooms, 'What is the meaning of life?' It said, 'Shut up and get to work.

32. I think; therefore I am.

René Descartes

33. I try not to borrow, first you borrow then you beg.

Ernest Hemingway

34. I would never die for my beliefs, because I might be wrong.

Bertrand Russell

35. I'd rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right.

Elon Musk

36. If it's universal then it's as close to sacred as possible.

Jordan Peterson

37. If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

Baruch Spinoza

38. If you can do and be anything anytime, then everything is like nothing.

39. If you divide the world into the good and the bad and place yourself on the side of the good, then the odds of that being true is virtually zero.

Jordan Peterson

40. In Heaven all the interesting people are missing.

Friedrich Nietzsche

41. Ignorance is bliss.

Thomas Gray

42. If you get rid of free will, what's the point of free speech?

43. In choosing for myself I choose for all men.

Jean-Paul Sartre

44. Intellect associates with arrogance and pride. There is nothing outside of what you know.

John Milton

45. It can be true and you can still be wrong.

Jordan Peterson

46. It is in change that things find rest.

Heraclitus

47. It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up til now has consisted of—namely, the confession of its originator and a species of involuntary and unconscious autobiography.

Friedrich Nietzsche

48. It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.

Chuck Palahniuk

49. It is better to do nothing than to be busy doing nothing.

Proverb

50. Less is more.

Robert Browning

51. Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.

Jawaharlal Nehru

52. Luxury is comfortable, otherwise it is not luxury.

Coco Chanel

53. Knowledge is power.

Francis Bacon

54. Leisure is the mother of philosophy.

Thomas Hobbes

55. Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

56. Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Jean-Paul Sartre

57. Man is the measure of all things.

Protagoras

58. Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.

Immanuel Kant

59. Our thinking should have a vigorous fragrance, like a wheat field on a summer's night.

Friedrich Nietzsche

60. Philosophy is at once the most sublime and the most trivial of human pursuits.

William James

61. One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.

René Descartes

62. Nihilism means that there is no meaning to anything, but the opposite is just as true, that there is meaning to everything.

Jordan Peterson

63. No man is a hero to his debtors.

Madame Cornuel

64. Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the comedian is the only thing that makes sense.

Alan Moore

65. Poverty is not shameful, but poverty without ambition is shameful.

Xiao Chuang You Ji

66. Philosophies necessary lead to a dead end, stuck on one idea in a well lit room of that idea.

67. Renouncing worldly desires is the goal of life.

Meher Baba

68. Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

Alan Watts

69. No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

Heraclitus

70. Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.

Karl Marx

71. Philosophy is by its nature something esoteric, neither made for the mob nor capable of being prepared for the mob.

Friedrich Hegel

72. My worst enemy is my best friend.

Niladri Sekhar Dash

73. Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go.

74. Soon I awaked and there I was, veritably myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly dreaming I am a man.

Zhuangzi

75. Talent hits a target no one else can hit. Genius hits a target no one else can see.

Arthur Schopenhauer

76. The best is the enemy of the good.

Voltaire

77. The absurd is the first truth.

Albert Camus

78. The bigger the better; in everything.

Freddie Mercury

79. The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

Winston Churchill

80. The ideals which have always shone before me and filled me with joy are beauty, goodness and truth.

Albert Einstein

81. The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

82. The Latin word for selfish means stationary and unmoving.

83. The line between order and chaos is where you will find the most meaning.

Jordan Peterson

84. The oldest, shortest words - 'yes' and 'no' - are those which require the most thought.

Pythagoras

85. The only thing I know is that I know nothing.

Socrates

86. The meaning of life and the theory of everything is the same thing.

87. The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.

Niels Bohr

88. The opposite of good is not evil. It is indifference. The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.

Elie Wiesel

89. The problem for us is not whether our desires are satisfied or not. The problem is how do we know what we desire.

Slavoj Žižek

90. The price of greatness is responsibility.

Winston Churchill

91. The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.

William Arthur Ward

92. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw

93. The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.

James Branch Cabell

94. The price of happiness is bondage, the price of freedom is loneliness.

C. S. Lewis

95. The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

Aristotle

96. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Aristotle

97. The way you do anything is the way you do everything.

Martha Beck

98. The ultimate aim of martial arts is not having to use them.

Miyamoto Musashi

99. The word 'philosophy' means 'the love of wisdom.' Wisdom is the possession of knowledge, experience and good judgement. Yet knowledge itself is only information: wisdom is the use of knowledge to pursue the good life.

100. The unexamined life is not worth living.

Socrates

101. The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

George Bernard Shaw

102. There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do and that is to contradict other philosophers.

William James

103. There is nothing more dangerous than absolute certainty in one's beliefs.

104. Truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.

Friedrich Hegel

105. To define is to limit.

Oscar Wilde

106. This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!

Friedrich Nietzsche

107. Values aren't created it's discovered because we're not gods we can't create our own values.

108. Think of a life that is perfect in every way. Can you really imagine what that life would be like?

Brian Tracy

109. We live in the best of all possible worlds.

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

110. We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

Oscar Wilde

111. We become what we behold. We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.

Marshall McLuhan

112. What could I say to you that would be of value, except that perhaps you seek too much, that as a result of your seeking you cannot find.

Hermann Hesse

113. We're all puppets, Laurie. I'm just a puppet who can see the strings.

Alan Moore

114. What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness and say, 'This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!

Friedrich Nietzsche

115. Whatever it is you're seeking won't come in the form you're expecting.

Haruki Marukami

116. When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her.

Sacha Guitry

117. Where is the life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?

T. S. Eliot

118. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

119. Which came first the chicken or the egg? The egg, laid by a bird that was not a chicken.

Neil deGrasse Tyson

120. Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche

121. Why do bad things happen to good people?

122. When you get the message, it's time to hang up the phone.

Alan Watts

123. When you play games you must have limitations, if no limitations no games. The price of being is limitation or you can be or do whatever you like.

Jordan Peterson

124. When you realize how perfect everything is you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.

Longchenpa

125. You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way and the only way, it does not exist.

Friedrich Nietzsche

126. You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.

Cormac McCarthy