NRS: Philosophy
Words
that shaped
worlds.
The thinkers, the dissenters, the dreamers.
Those who refused to let knowledge stay cloistered.
Dostoevsky
01 : Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1821–1881
“The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for.”
The Brothers Karamazov
“Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart.”
Crime and Punishment
“Beauty will save the world.”
The Idiot
“Man is a creature that can get accustomed to anything, and I think that is the best definition of him.”
The House of the Dead
“But how can you live and have no story to tell?”
Tolstoy
02 : Leo Tolstoy, 1828–1910
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”
Three Methods of Reform
“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”
War and Peace
“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.”
Attributed
Nietzsche
03 : Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844–1900
“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
“Without music, life would be a mistake.”
Twilight of the Idols
“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”
Twilight of the Idols
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”
Plath
04 : Sylvia Plath, 1932–1963
“I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart: I am, I am, I am.”
The Bell Jar
“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want.”
The Journals of Sylvia Plath
Marx
05 : Karl Marx, 1818–1883
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it.”
Theses on Feuerbach
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
Critique of the Gotha Programme
Kafka
06 : Franz Kafka, 1883–1924
“A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.”
Letter to Oskar Pollak, 1904
“Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.”
Conversations with Kafka (Janouch)
“Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion.”
Attributed
“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
Woolf
07 : Virginia Woolf, 1882–1941
“A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.”
A Room of One’s Own
“I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.”
A Room of One’s Own
“You cannot find peace by avoiding life.”
The Waves
Frankl
08 : Viktor Frankl, 1905–1997
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms : to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances.”
Man’s Search for Meaning
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose.”
Man’s Search for Meaning
“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Man’s Search for Meaning
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
de Beauvoir
09 : Simone de Beauvoir, 1908–1986
“One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”
The Second Sex
“Change your life today. Don’t gamble on the future, act now, without delay.”
Attributed
Camus
10 : Albert Camus, 1913–1960
“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.”
Return to Tipasa
“One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
The Myth of Sisyphus
Arendt
11 : Hannah Arendt, 1906–1975
“The smallest act in the most limited circumstances bears the seed of the same boundlessness, because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation.”
The Human Condition
“The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution.”
On Revolution
Luxemburg
12 : Rosa Luxemburg, 1871–1919
“Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.”
The Russian Revolution
“Those who do not move do not notice their chains.”
Attributed
“The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.”
Tagore
13 : Rabindranath Tagore, 1861–1941
“The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.”
My School
“Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high; Where knowledge is free.”
Gitanjali
“You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.”
Attributed
These are our
anchors.
Not commandments. Not a canon. Just voices that remind us why we do this.
Knowledge must live in the world : or it dies on the shelf.
Network for the Research with Sociality 