Throughout the centuries, many famous people have left phrases for the memory .

Phrases that make us reflect, that motivate us, that help us learn. In short, great phrases spoken by brilliant minds. That is why, in today’s article, we have made a list of 90 great phrases that great writers, politicians, or philosophers have recorded in the history of humanity.

Phrases of famous people that you should learn by heart

In the following lines you will find deep reflections on life, friendship, learning or intelligence. Don’t miss them!

1. The greater the difficulty, the more glory there is in overcoming it (Epicurus)

The Greek philosopher, founder of Epicureanism, leaves us this great motivating sentence for history.

2. Life must be understood backwards. But it must be lived forward (Søren Kierkegaard)

A nice positive phrase from the great Danish philosopher.

3. Man is condemned to be free (Jean-Paul Sartre)

For this French thinker, freedom is inherent to the human condition and, therefore, man is absolutely responsible for the use he makes of it .

4. In everything there is a part of everything (Anaxagoras)

A great phrase from this pre-Socratic philosopher

5. The courageous man is the one who not only overcomes his enemies, but also his pleasures (Democritus)

A phrase about life that is full of meaning

6. Creativity requires that courage be detached from certainties (Erich Fromm)

To be creative, one has to step on the uncertainties, says the father of humanist psychoanalysis.

7. Those who do not know history are condemned to repeat it (Edmund Burke)

A sentence about the importance of experience and knowledge.

8. The best part of beauty is that which no image can express (Francis Bacon)

Francis Bacon did not leave this gem of a sentence.

9. From a small spark can light a flame (Dante)

A wise phrase that can be exemplified by thousands of everyday situations.

10. The environment shapes the actions of the individual (B. F. Skinner)

This famous character of behavioral psychology expresses the relative nature of the line that separates the individual from the environment.

11. No one can hurt me without my permission (Gandhi)

The always remembered pacifist leader explains the importance of letting yourself be hurt or not.One of Gandhi’s most popular phrases.

12. I can control my passions and emotions if I can understand their nature (Spinoza)

This famous quote is about emotional intelligence, already in the time of Spinoza .

13. Human beings are not born forever on the day their mothers give birth to them, but life forces them to give birth to themselves again and again (Gabriel García Márquez)

A phrase that is a real truth about life. Life makes you mature .

14. Being independent of public opinion is the first formal condition for achieving something great (Friedrich Hegel)

A phrase that speaks of one’s own thought.

15. Knowing is relatively easy. To want and to act according to what one would like, is always harder (Aldous Huxley)

A phrase that refers to the difficulty of being oneself.

16. Where there is a television, there is bound to be someone who is not reading (John Irving)

On the influence of the small screen in our life.

17. Young people are happy because they have the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who retains the ability to see beauty never grows old (Franz Kafka)

A famous quote about staying eternally young.

18. Touch is the art of letting something be seen without making an enemy (Isaac Newton)

A great phrase from the physicist and philosopher Isaac Newton .

19. We live in the best of all possible worlds (Leibniz)

At least this is the only one we know. With its good things and its bad things.

20. He who is good at making excuses is seldom good at anything else (Benjamin Franklin)

Cowards make excuses instead of facing reality.

21. Clinging to anger is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die (Buddha)

The ever-good Buddha explains to us some of the principles of his philosophy.

22. There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered (Nelson Mandela)

The great Nelson Mandela uttered this phrase once.

23. If we do not believe in the freedom of expression of people we despise, we do not believe in it at all (Noam Chomsky)

A phrase that reminds us of the importance of freedom of expression.

24. What we achieve internally will change our external reality (Plutarch)

A beautiful phrase about personal development.

25. You don’t develop courage by being happy in your relationships every day. Courage is developed by surviving difficult times and defying adversity (Epicurus)

You have to suffer in this life to value what you have.

26. Nothing reinforces authority like silence (Leonardo da Vinci)

A great phrase from the great Leonardo da Vinc i .

27. The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself (Thales)

Self-knowledge is key to a healthy emotional life.

28. The foundation of every state is the education of its young people (Diogenes)

Education is key to the socialization process.

29. It is not what happens to you, but how you react that matters (Epithet)

On the importance of positively evaluating the facts.

30. There is only one way to happiness and that is to stop worrying about things that are out of reach of your will (Epithet)

It’s not worth worrying about what you can’t change.

31. Great results require great ambitions (Heraclitus)

Great goals are achieved by aiming high.

32. The person who is a teacher in patience can handle everything else (George Savile)

A sentence by the famous character George Savile that talks about the power of patience.

33. Hope is a good breakfast, but a bad dinner (Francis Bacon)

Hope ceases to be positive when it is the last resort.

34. Someone who does not believe in miracles is not realistic (David Ben-Gurion)

A sentence to reflect, from David Ben-Gurion about the anomalies and unexplainable facts contained in reality.

35. There is no sadder vision than that of a young pessimist (Mark Twain)

Mark Twain talks about the value associated with youth and the mistake of wasting this stage of life.

36. The risk of a bad decision is preferable to the terror of indecision (Maimonides)

A bad decision always hurts, but indecision is worse.

37. Education is the movement from darkness to light (Allan Bloom)

A phrase intended to explain what education is.

38. To know that you don’t know, that’s humility. To think that one knows what one does not know, that is sickness (Lao-tse)

About ignorance and the perception of wisdom.

39. In the end, you will not be asked what you have known, but what you have done (Jean de Gerson)

The importance of the action , as this is what we will really remember.

40. Life is very simple, but we insist on making it complicated (Confucius)

According to Confucius , life is simpler than it seems.

41. Taking advantage of good advice requires more wisdom than giving it (John Churton Collins)

A phrase from life, expressed by John Churton Collins .

42. Our life always expresses the result of our dominant thoughts (Søren Kierkegaard)

This sentence could be summarized as follows: we are what we think.

43. In the end, it is not the years in our life that count, but life in our years (Abraham Lincoln)

What is really important is the quality of our life.

44. Nothing is more harmful to creativity than the rage of inspiration (Umberto Eco)

A great phrase from the always remembered, Umberto Eco .

45. Success is about getting what you want. Happiness, in enjoying what you get (Emerson)

A phrase we should always keep in our heads.

46. A heart is a wealth that cannot be bought or sold, but which is given away (Gustave Flaubert)

Giving love is one of the best experiences that human beings can enjoy.

47. If we exaggerated our joys, as we do our sorrows, our problems would lose importance (Anatole France)

Sometimes, we’re too pessimistic. A phrase to apply in our daily lives.

48. Death as the end of time that one lives can only cause terror to those who do not know how to fill the time that is given to them to live (Viktor Frankl)

A great phrase about human existence. By Viktor Frankl.

49. Modern science has not yet produced a reassuring medicine as effective as a few kind words (Sigmund Freud)

To find inner peace, one must be kind: both to others and to oneself.

50. Man is the measure of all things (Protagoras)

A great phrase from Pythagoras about the human being.

51. Patience is bitter, but its fruit is sweet (Jean-Jacques Rousseau)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau explains that patience can be bitter

53. We’re asleep. Our life is a dream. But sometimes we wake up, just enough to know that we are dreaming (Ludwig Wittgestein)

A beautiful phrase about the greatness of this life.

54. Change pleasures, but do not change friends (Voltaire)

Voltaire . About the importance of friendship and having friends.

55. Lacking one’s own books is the height of misery (Benjamin Franklin)

Books and reading them is one of the great pleasures of life.

56. Marry: if by chance you meet a good woman, you will be happy; if not, you will become a philosopher, which is always useful for man (Socrates)

A phrase that will make you think about marriage. From the great Socrates .

57. Almost all people live life in quiet desperation (Henry David Thoreau)

A phrase that seeks to explain the complexity of life and the bad times one can experience.

58. We would be better off if it weren’t for the fact that we have built too many walls and not enough bridges (D. Pire)

A phrase about the worst in human beings. Walls have never been good.

59. Before I got married I had six theories on how to raise the little ones. Now I have six little ones and no theory (Lord Rochester)

Raising children is complicated, as this sentence states.

60. To know and to know how to demonstrate is worth twice (Baltasar Gracián)

A famous quote from Baltasar Gracián that talks about the differences between superficial and deep knowledge.

61. Announce with a hundred tongues the pleasant message; but let the bad news reveal itself (Shakespeare)

Bad news is not pleasant, but it exists.

62. I would give everything I know, for half of what I don’t know (René Descartes)

You never know enough. There’s always room to learn.

63. To fall short is virtue, power and humility; to let oneself be fallen short is vileness and crime (Quevedo)

A phrase for reflection, by Quevedo .

64. Experience is the disease that offers the least risk of contagion (Oliverio Girondo)

We can learn a lot from experience and from what has happened to us in the past.

65. Experience is not what you live but all the good you learn (Jairo Fowbier Pabón)

As in the previous statement. Experience helps us to learn.

66. The fault of our age is that its men do not want to be useful but important (Churchill)

A phrase about narcissistic people, who want power above all else.

67. Lack of intelligence, poverty and lack of education are the three major factors in crime (Auchner)

An interesting phrase that will make you think

68. The lack of humanity of the computer consists in that once it is programmed and works properly its honesty is impeccable (Isaac Asimov)

About the quality of being human and honest.

69. False modesty is the most decent of all lies (Chamfort)

Refers to false modesty . Well, among the lies, it is the least bad one.

70. Faith consists in believing what we do not see, and the reward is to see what we believe (St. Augustine)

A positive phrase from St. Augustine about faith in God.

71. The wise man should not abstain from participating in the government of the state, for it is a crime to renounce being useful to the needy and a cowardice to give way to the unworthy (Epictet of Phrygia)

A reflection on politics: wise citizens must try to participate in the management of the polis in order to seek justice for all.

72. The great discovery of my generation is that human beings can alter their lives by altering their mental attitudes (William James)

A motivating phrase formulated by William James. Attitude makes the difference in our results.

73. You are what you do, not what you say you will do (C. G. Jung)

Your actions determine what you are, not your words.

74. The human heart is an instrument with many strings; the perfect connoisseur of men knows how to make them all vibrate, like a good musician (Charles Dickens)

The man you know is a powerful man.

75. Most social acts must be understood in context, as they lose meaning if they are isolated (Solomon Asch)

People are biopsychosocial beings . That is, context is important in influencing how we act.

76. If a person loves only one person and is indifferent to all others, his love is not love, but symbiotic attachment or extended selfishness (Erich Fromm)

When we’re in love with someone, we’d give our lives for that person. We can fool ourselves into thinking we are good people, but even the most selfish can lose their head over someone and seem like dedicated people.

77. Targets transform a random walk into a chase (Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi)

Having goals to pursue motivates and excites us.

78. A man who does not feed on his dreams soon grows old (William Shakespeare)

If a person doesn’t have dreams or something to fight for, he’s dead in life.

79. If you do not remember the slightest folly into which love drove you, you have not loved (William Shakespeare)

Love can make us feel in full swing and can make us do incredible things that we would never have thought we would do.

80. When the sage points at the moon, the fool looks at the finger (Confucius)

Unlike the wise, fools do not want to see beyond what their eyes can see .

81. A friend is a person with whom you can think out loud (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Great friends are those you can trust and to whom you can tell the greatest secrets.

82. No one’s knowledge can go beyond his experience (John Locke)

Experience is the greatest source of knowledge. What is known as experiential learning.

83. There is only one god, knowledge, and one devil, ignorance (Socrates)

Socrates pronouncing a sentence about knowledge and ignorance.

84. If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him (Voltaire)

One of the positive things about religion is the values it pursues.

85. Leisure is the mother of philosophy (Thomas Hobbe)

A great philosophical phrase by Thomas Hobbe , one of the most famous British philosophers.

86. We are what we do repeatedly. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit (Aristotle)

A phrase of the Greek philosopher, Aristotle . In which he talks about the importance of habit in achieving excellence.

87. Never think you know everything. However high you value yourself, always have the courage to say to yourself: I am ignorant (Ivan Pavlov)

Humans can be in a continuous learning process. To believe that you know everything is ignorant.

88. Lawmakers certainly need a school of morals (Simon Bolivar)

Unfortunately, not all politicians are honest.

89. Man only likes to list his problems, he does not usually calculate his happiness (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)

It is easier to focus on the negative things than on the positive things that happen to us.

90. The reward for a good deed is to have done it (Seneca)

Doing a good deed makes us feel really good.

91. The purpose of life is to be happy (Dalai Lama)

One of the most remembered and simple phrases of this religious reference.

92. Wherever you go, go with all your heart (Confucius)

An inspiring and poetic reflection of this thinker of Chinese philosophy.

93. I can resist everything but temptation (Oscar Wilde)

This writer was known for his sense of humor based on irony.

94. The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge (Bertrand Russell)

A reflection on the fundamental elements of a life that develops correctly.

95. We aim above the target to reach it (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Another of the motivational phrases of this American writer and poet.

96. Knowledge will give you power, but character will give you respect (Bruce Lee)

A reflection on two of the elements that make up authority figures.

97. Friends show their love in hard times, not in happiness (Euripides)

This ancient Greek poet portrays in this way the essence of friendship .

98. Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower (Albert Camus)

A reflection on the importance of perspective.

99. With each day comes new strength and new thoughts (Eleanor Roosevelt)

A reflection on new beginnings and the opportunities they provide.

100. Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens (Jimi Hendrix)

An apparent paradox about what shapes the human intellect.

101. Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses itself through interrelationships (Karl Marx)

This philosopher reflects in this sentence his mentality based on the analysis of social phenomena.