c600BC The First Philosophers

"Philosophy begins with Thales" The First Philosophers

c450BC CONFUCIUS

"The object of the superior man is truth" The Analects

c355BC PLATO

"Until Philosophers are kings...cities will never have rest from their troubles" The Republic

The Symposium

The Apology

c300BC ARISTOTLE

"If it is in our power to act nobly, it is also in our power to do evil" Nicomachean Ethics

The Politics

c300BC EPICURUS

"No pleasure is a bad thing in itself" Sovran Maxims

c50BC CICERO

"Virtue is the foundation of friendship" On Friendship and Old Age

c180AD Marcus AURELIUS

"...We live but for a moment" Meditations

c390 St AUGUSTINE

"Too late have I come to love you, O beauty so ancient and so fresh" Confessions

c520 Severinus BOETHIUS

"The good are always strong" The Consolation of Philosophy

1515 Desiderius ERASMUS

"Fortune favours the fool" In Praise of Folly

1515 Thomas MORE

"All princes have more delights in warlike matters... than in the good feats of peace" Utopia

1520 Niccolò MACHIAVELLI

"Men ought either to be well treated or crushed" The Prince

1543 Nicolaus COPERNICUS

"Therefore, the earth is not flat" Revolutions of the Celestial Orbs

1605 Francis BACON

"if a man ... be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties. The Advancement of Learning

1651 Thomas HOBBES

"...the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" Leviathan

1660 Blaise PASCAL

"Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed" Thoughts

1677 Baruch SPINOZA

"there can be no hope without fear, and no fear without hope" Ethics

1677 Isaac NEWTON

"I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me" Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

1690 John LOCKE

"I have always thought the actions of men the best interpreters of their thoughts" Essay Concerning Human Understanding

1698 Gottfried LEIBNIZ

"The soul is the mirror of the universe" Monadology

1710 George BERKELEY

"Essence IS perception" Principles of Human Knowledge

1751 David HUME

"It is never possible to deduce judgements of value from matters of fact" Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

1762 Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU

"Man was born free, and everywhere he is in irons" The Social Contract

1776 Adam SMITH

"It is not from the benevolence of the.. baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest" The Wealth of Nations

1789 Jeremy BENTHAM

"Mankind is governed by pain and pleasure" Principles of Morals and Legislation

1792 Thomas PAINE

"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil" The Rights of Man

1792 Mary WOLLSTONECRAFT

"I do not wish them to have power over men; but over themselves" Vindication of the Rights of Women

1795 Le Marquis De SADE

"Cruelty is a virtue, not a vice" Philosophy in the Boudoir

1795 Auguste COMTE

"Society... cannot be regarded as composed of individuals" Positive Philosophy

1830 Carl Von CLAUSEWITZ

"War is the continuation of politics by other means" On War

1835 Alexis de TOCQEVILLE

"In America I saw more than America; I sought the image of democracy itself" Democracy in America

1836 Ralph Waldo EMERSON

"A man is a god in ruins" Nature

1844 Arthur SCHOPENHAUER

"We can surely never arrive at the nature of things from without" The World as Will and Idea

1846 MARX and ENGELS

"The ideas of the ruling class are the ruling ideas" The Communist Manifesto

The German Ideology

1859 John Stuart MILL

"Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign" On Liberty

A System of Logic

1854 Henry D THOREAU

"It is never too late to give up our prejudices" Walden

1859 Charles DARWIN

"...endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved" On The Origin of Species

1886 Friedrich NIETZSCHE

"When you stare into an abyss ... the abyss also stares into you". Beyond Good and Evil

1902 William JAMES

"If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience". Varieties of Religious Experience

1910 Sigmund FREUD

"...we men... find reality generally quite unsatisfactory" Psychoanalysis

1916 Albert EINSTEIN

"Gott würfelt nicht (God does not play dice)" Relativity

1921 Ludwig WITTGENSTEIN

"The world is the totality of facts, not things" Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

1936 A.J. AYER

"...logic and mathematics are true simply because we never allow them to be anything else" Language, Truth + Logic

1945 Jean-Paul SARTRE

"Once freedom has exploded in the soul of man, the gods no longer have any power over him" Existentialism is a Humanism

1957 Sir Karl POPPER

"Science may be described as the art of systematic oversimplification" The Logic of Scientific Discovery