Let anyone try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occurs. Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming. -- William James

The banality of evil. -- Hannah Arendt

In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies of liberty. -- David Hume

By recognizing a favorable opinion of yourself, and taking pleasure in it, you in a measure give yourself and your peace of mind into the keeping of another, of whose attitude you can never be certain. You have a new source of doubt and apprehension. -- Charles Cooley

Oh happy race of mortals if your hearts are ruled as is the universe, by Love. -- Boethius

In general, I feel if you can't say it clearly you don't understand it yourself. -- John Searle

The extension of women's rights is the basic principle of all social progress. -- Charles Fourier

It is...easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague. -- C.S. Peirce

Anyone who has had a glimpse of the range and subtlety of the thought of Plato or of a Hegel will long ago have despaired of becoming a philosopher. -- Michael Oakeshott

Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. -- John Dewey

The life of a man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster. -- David Hume

[N]othing was ever equal in Absurdity and Wickedness to our present Patriotism. -- David Hume

There can be no other truth to take off from than this: I think, therefore, I exist. There we have the absolute truth of consciousness becoming aware of itself. -- Jean-Paul Sartre

I would leave this life with apprehension if I knew a better man than me. -- Jean-Jacques Rousseau

And for mathematical science, he that doubts their certainty hath need of a dose of hellebore. -- Joseph Glanvill

It is the highest impertinence and presumption, therefore, in kings and ministers, to pretend to watch over the economy of private people, and to restrain their expense, either by sumptuary laws, or by prohibiting the importation of foreign luxuries. -- Adam Smith

By Bentham, beyond all others, men have been led to ask themselves, in regard to any ancient or received opinion, Is it true? and by Coleridge, What is the meaning of it? -- John Stuart Mill

[E]veryone is always and everywhere, more or less consciously, playing a role. -- Robert Ezra Park

The universe is not only queerer than we suppose, but queerer than we can suppose. -- John Haldane

Many people are afraid of freedom. They are conditioned to be afraid of it. -- Herbert Marcuse

Thus it is that no group ever sets itself up as the One without at once setting up the Other over against itself. -- Simone de Beauvoir

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. -- Francois Voltaire

The value of a whole must not be assumed to be the same as the sum of the value of its parts. -- G.E. Moore

It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them. -- Alfred Adler

Great men can't be ruled. -- Ayn Rand

Our belief in any particular natural law cannot have a safer basis than our unsuccessful critical attempts to refute it. -- Karl Popper

In the state of nature, if you have a mind to kill, that state itself affords you a right. -- Thomas Hobbes

Men have never been good, they are not good, they never will be good. -- Karl Barth

Suicide is not abominable because God prohibits it; God prohibits it because it is abominable. -- Immanuel Kant

The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. -- Richard Dawkins