Greek Philosophy Quotes

Whereas the Greeks gave to will the boundaries of reason, we have come to put the will's impulse in the very center of reason, which has, as a result, become deadly.

What has Athens to do with Jerusalem?

Eventually, Aristotle appeared among the Greeks. He improved the methods of logic and systematized its problems and details. He assigned to logic its proper place as the first philosophical discipline and the introduction to philosophy. Therefore he is called the First Teacher.

Socrates... Whom well inspir'd the oracle pronounc'd Wisest of men.

Aristotle's metaphysics, roughly speaking, may be described as Plato diluted by common sense. He is difficult because Plato and common sense do not mix easily.

Greek philosophy seems to have met with something with which a good tragedy is not supposed to meet, namely, a dull ending.

Plato was a bore.

The ancient Greeks, as Plato reports, believed that we discover truth through "reminiscence," that is by "remembering," by intuitively searching into our own experience.

It is true, indeed, that the account Plato gives in 'Timaeus' is different from what he says in his so-called 'unwritten teachings.'

Cicero called Aristotle a river of flowing gold, and said of Plato's Dialogues, that if Jupiter were to speak, it would be in language like theirs.

The Greeks are wrong to recognize coming into being and perishing; for nothing comes into being nor perishes, but is rather compounded or dissolved from things that are. So they would be right to call coming into being composition and perishing dissolution.

The Greeks saw everything in forms which we are trying to ascertain as law, and classify as cause.

Of all peoples the Greeks have dreamt the dream of life best.

As the Deity has given us Greeks all other blessings in moderation, so our moderation gives us a kind of wisdom which is timid, in all likelihood, and fit for common people, not one which is kingly and splendid. This wisdom, such as it is, observing that human life is ever subject to all sorts of vicissitudes, forbids us to be puffed up by the good things we have, or to admire a man's felicity while there is still time for it to change.

It was modesty that invented the word "philosopher" in Greece and left the magnificent overweening presumption in calling oneselfwise to the actors of the spirit--the modesty of such monsters of pride and sovereignty as Pythagoras, as Plato.

The epoch of doubt and transition during which the Greeks passed from the dim fancies of mythology to the fierce light of science was the age of Pericles, and the endeavour to substitute certain truth for the prescriptions of impaired authorities, which was then beginning to absorb the energies of the Greek intellect, is the grandest movement in the profane annals of mankind, for to it we owe, even after the immeasurable progress accomplished by Christianity, much of our philosophy and far the better part of the political knowledge we possess.

The superiority of the Greeks seems not so much the result of climate and society, as of the simplicity of their end and the uniformity of their means.

If we want happiness, I think we should follow classic Greek wisdom and live with areté. The word directly translates as 'excellence' or 'virtue,' but has a deeper meaning — something closer to 'expressing the highest version of ourselves.' When we're showing up fully moment to moment, there's no room for regret/anxiety/disillusionment, just a whole lot of happiness. Here's to getting our areté on!

In the ancient world and, above all, among the Greeks, human nature was held in high esteem.

So then there was the Greek, Socrates, he was great... He invented questioning. Before Socrates, no questioning. Everyone sort of went, ''Yeah, I suppose so.

Women played no part in Athenian high culture. They could not vote, attend the theatre, or walk in the stoa talking philosophy. But the male orientation of Greek culture was inseparable of its genius. Athens became great not despite but because of its misogyny.

Call no man happy till he is dead.

Save for the wild force of Nature, nothing moves in this world that is not Greek in its origin.

Plato's Symposium shows that flirtation and philosophy can further one another.