I think therefore I am.
Descartes
1596-1650
The unexamined life is
not worth living.
Socrates
470-399BCE
God understands everything
through eternal truth, since
he does not need
experience.
Leibniz
1646-1716
Face the facts of being what
you are, for that is what
changes what you are.
Søren Kierkegaard
1813 – 1855
You cannot step in the
same river twice.
Heraclitus
535-475BCE
The greatest happiness of the
greatest number is the
foundation of morals and
legislation.
Jeremy Bentham
1748-1832
Always recognise that human
individuals are ends, and do
not use them as means to
your end.
Immanuel Kant
1724-1804
All mankind... being all equal and
independent, no one ought to
harm another in his life, health,
liberty or possessions.
John Locke
1632-1704
We are what we repeatedly
do. Excellence, then, is not
an act, but a habit.
Aristotle
384-322 BCE
Wise men speak because
they have something to
say; Fools because they
have to say something.
Plato
429-348 BCE
All truths are easy to
understand once they are
discovered; the point is to
discover them.
Galileo Galilei
1564-1642
What made Adam capable of
obeying God’s commands also
made him able to Sin.
St Augustine of Hippo
354-430
We believe that You [God]
are that than which
nothing greater can be
thought.
St Anselm
1033-1109
The human mind is part
of the infinite intellect
of God.
Benedictus Spinoza
1632-1677
Let women share the rights
and she will emulate the
virtues of men.
Mary Wollstonecraft
1759-1797
It is better to be Socrates
dissatisfied than a fool
satisfied.
John Stuart Mill
1806-1873
Conscience is the perfect
interpreter of life.
Karl Barth
1886-1968
Compassion is a call, a
demand of nature, to relieve
the unhappy as hunger is a
natural call for food.
Joseph Butler
1692-1752
Can a mortal ask questions
which God finds unanswerable?
Quite easily, I should think. All
nonsense questions are
unanswerable.
C.S. Lewis
1898-1963
You must submit to
supreme suffering in order
to discover the completion
of joy.
John Calvin
1509-1564
A man’s own manner and
character is what most
becomes him.
Cicero
106-43 BCE
A man who dares to waste one
hour of time has no discovered
the value of life.
Charles Darwin
1809-1882
Reason is, and ought
only to be the slave of
the passions.
David Hume
1711-1776
Just as no one can be forced
into belief, so no one can be
forced into unbelief.
Sigmund Freud
1856-1939
Man need not be degraded to
a machine by being denied to
be a ghost in a machine.
Gilbert Ryle
1900-1976
Education is the art of
making man ethical.
Georg Wilhelm
Friedrich Hegel
1770-1831
We ought to love people
and use things, the essence
of immorality is to love
things and use people.
Joseph Fletcher
1905-1991
All credibility, all good
conscience, all evidence of
truth come only from the
senses.
Friedrich Nietzsche
1844-1900
Our preferences cannot
count any more than the
preferences of others.
Peter Singer
1946-
We shall not find life by
refusing to let go of our
precious protected selves.
Rowan Williams
1950-
If all our happiness is bound up
entirely in our personal
circumstances it is difficult not
to demand of life more than it
has to give.
Bertrand Russell
1872-1970
Being is. Being is initself. Being is what
it is.
Jean-Paul Sartre
1905-1980
He who risks and fails can
be forgive. He who never
risks and never fails is a
failure in his whole being.
Paul Tillich
1886-1965
This is the first precept of the law,
that good is to be done and
promoted, and evil is to be
avoided. All other precepts of the
natural law are based on this.
St Thomas Aquinas
1225-1274
All moral laws are merely
statements that certain
kinds of actions will have
good effects..
G.E. Moore
1873-1958
At the centre of nonviolence stands the
principle of love.
Martin Luther King Jnr
1929-1968
An eye for an eye only
ends up making the
whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi
1869-1948
I have found the paradox,
that if you love until it
hurts, there can be no
more hurt, only more love.
Mother Teresa
1910-1997
AS Ethics
Moral Absolutism and Moral relativism
Natural Moral Law
Kantian Ethics
Utilitarianism
Religious Ethics
Abortion and the Right to a Child
Euthanasia and the Right to Life
Genetic Engineering and Embryo research
War and Peace
A2 Ethics
Meta Ethics – The Language of Ethics
Virtue Ethics
Free Will and Determinism
Conscience
Environmental and Business Ethics
Sexual Ethics
AS Philosophy
Ancient Greek Philosophy
Judaeo-Christian Influences on Philosophy
Traditional Arguments for the Existence of God
Challenges to Religious Belief
A2 Philosophy
Religious Language
Religious Experience
Miracles
Attributes of God
Life and death; the Soul