33 Borderline Genius Philosophy Quotes That Read Like Instagram Captions

“When we hate someone, what we hate is something in him, or in our image of him, that is part of ourselves. Nothing that isn't in us ever bothers us.”

— Hermann Hesse, amazon.com

“Moral bitterness is a basic technique for endowing the idiot with dignity.”

— Marshall McLuhan, amazon.com

“Human knowledge is never contained in one person. It grows from the relationships we create between each other and the world, and still it is never complete.”

— Paul Kalanithi, amazon.com

“If you look deeply into the palm of your hand, you will see your parents and all generations of your ancestors. All of them are alive in this moment. Each is present in your body. You are the continuation of each of these people.”

— Thich Nhat Hanh, amazon.com

“It is impossible to point out stupidity without it pointing back at you.”

— Jean Baudrillard, amazon.com

“There is no wisdom, only many wisdoms— beautiful and delusional.”

— David Shields, amazon.com

“Freedom does not lie in discovering or being able to determine who we are, but in rebelling against those ways in which we are already defined, categorized, and classified.”

— John Rajchman, amazon.com

“I wish men would begin by respecting themselves: everything else follows from that.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, amazon.com

“Rational thought imposes a limit on a person's concept of his relation to the cosmos.”

— John Nash, nobelprize.org

“If you experience life as a communist or a capitalist, as a Muslim or a Jew, you are experiencing life in a prejudiced, slanted way; there is a barrier, a layer of fat between Reality and you because you no longer see and touch it directly.”

— Anthony De Mello, amazon.com

“All of us want to realize ourselves as distinct persons, but we also want others — lots of others — to know that we are our own distinct selves. We do not want to be unique all alone.”

— , amazon.com

“Only human eyes can weep.”

— Andrew Marvel, amazon.com

“We are fleshbots in love with an inflatable ego doll: ourselves.”

— Richard M. Doyle, amazon.com

“A book is a mirror. When a monkey looks in, no apostle can look out.”

— George Lichtenberg, amazon.com

“Embrace a philosophy of pessimism. Every human will disappoint you, and you'll do the same to them.”

— Alain de Botton, nytimes.com

“The benefit of control and self-sovereignty—is its own kind of freedom.”

— Ryan Holiday, thoughtcatalog.com

“The weight of this sad time we must obey.”

— William Shakespeare, amazon.com

“Nothing is simple, of course — least of all peace.”

— Colum McCann, nytimes.com

“Don’t try to see what all the colors look like when they’re added up. Instead, try to get into as many (revealing) moods as possible, as many ways of responding to the sacred as you can— and this life of serial resonances with the sacred is ultimately a kind of contentedness, happiness, even joy.”

— Hubert Dreyfus, amazon.com

“Your relevance is about as relevant as the Earth is to the billions and billions of stars in the sky.”

— Marc Ecko, amazon.com

“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”

— James Joyce, Stephen Dedalus, amazon.com

“Who chose this face for me?”

— James Joyce, Stephen Dedalus, amazon.com

“Why get hung up on what other people are doing if you go forward and work on what you think is best?”

— Larry Page, digiday.com

“Philosophers have merely interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”

— Karl Marx , marxists.org

“Gradually we become tired of the old, of what we safely possess, and we stretch out our hands again. Even the most beautiful scenery is no longer assured of our love after we have lived in it for three months, and some more distant coast attracts our avarice: possessions are generally diminished by…”

— Friedrich Nietzsche, amazon.com

“You have to go through the fire. Avoiding the pain is why most people never resolve it. You have to dig deep, sit in it, and ugly cry.”

— Vanessa Williams, amazon.com

“Better an imperfect dome in Florence than cathedrals in the clouds.”

— Twyla Tharp, amazon.com

“There’s so much pressure to be good and holy that we get scared of all the parts of us that aren’t.”

— Doug Frank, theotherjournal.com