The 50 best-known philosophers

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Confucius

c. 551 BC · c. 479 BC

Becoming human through learning, ritual and benevolence.

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Aristotle

384 BC · 322 BC

Observe, classify, reason: happiness through virtue.

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Plato

c. 428 BC · c. 348 BC

Beyond appearances, the eternal Forms.

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Karl Marx

1818 · 1883

History is the history of class struggles.

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Socrates

c. 470 BC · c. 399 BC

I know that I know nothing.

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René Descartes

1596 · 1650

Doubt everything to find what survives doubt.

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Immanuel Kant

1724 · 1804

Set the limits of reason; act from duty.

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Voltaire

1694 · 1778

Crush intolerance with reason and irony.

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Friedrich Nietzsche

1844 · 1900

God is dead: new values must be created.

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Augustine of Hippo

354 · 430

Believe to understand: God in the innermost self.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau

1712 · 1778

Man is born good; society corrupts him.

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Thomas Aquinas

1225 · 1274

Faith and reason cannot contradict each other.

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Avicenna

c. 980 · c. 1037

The soul knows it exists before any body: the flying man.

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Pythagoras

c. 582 BC · c. 490 BC

All is number.

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Niccolò Machiavelli

1469 · 1527

Power is judged by its effects, not good intentions.

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Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

1646 · 1716

We live in the best of all possible worlds.

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Laozi

c. 579 BC · c. 500 BC

Follow the Way (Dao) through non-action.

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John Locke

1632 · 1704

The mind is born a blank slate; power comes from consent.

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Jean-Paul Sartre

1905 · 1980

Existence precedes essence: we are condemned to be free.

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Simone de Beauvoir

1908 · 1986

One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

1770 · 1831

The real is rational: Spirit realises itself in history.

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Albert Camus

1913 · 1960

The world is silent: live lucidly, in revolt.

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Ibn Khaldun

1332 · 1406

Civilisations rise and fall with the strength of their solidarity.

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Blaise Pascal

1623 · 1662

The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of.

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Cicero

106 BC · 43 BC

True law is right reason in agreement with nature.

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Bertrand Russell

1872 · 1970

Clarify thought with logic, doubt dogmas.

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Ludwig Wittgenstein

1889 · 1951

The limits of my language mean the limits of my world.

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Al-Ghazali

1058 · 1111

Reason has limits: certainty comes from experiencing God.

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Benedictus de Spinoza

1632 · 1677

God, that is, Nature: everything follows by necessity.

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Francis Bacon

1561 · 1626

Knowledge is power: observe and experiment.

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Thales

c. 625 BC · c. 545 BC

The principle of all things is water.

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Martin Heidegger

1889 · 1976

What is Being? We have forgotten the question.

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Zhu Xi

1130 · 1200

Study the principle (li) of things to perfect oneself.

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Søren Kierkegaard

1813 · 1855

Truth is subjectivity: one must take the leap of faith.

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Marcus Aurelius

121 · 180

What is not up to you should not trouble you.

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Giordano Bruno

1548 · 1600

The universe is infinite, filled with countless worlds.

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Thomas Hobbes

1588 · 1679

Without a state, life would be solitary, brutish and short.

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Arthur Schopenhauer

1788 · 1860

Life swings between suffering and boredom.

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Averroes

1126 · 1198

Truth cannot contradict truth: philosophy and faith agree.

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David Hume

1711 · 1776

Neither causation nor induction can be proved: custom guides us.

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Montesquieu

1689 · 1755

To prevent abuse, power must check power.

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Nagarjuna

c. 150 · c. 250

All things are empty of inherent existence.

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Mary Wollstonecraft

1759 · 1797

Women share the same reason: educate them accordingly.

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Democritus

c. 460 BC · c. 360 BC

Nothing exists but atoms and the void.

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Erasmus

1466 · 1536

In Praise of Folly: learning against fanaticism.

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Antonio Gramsci

1891 · 1937

Power rests on cultural hegemony, not just force.

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Auguste Comte

1798 · 1857

Know only facts: the positive age of science.

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Denis Diderot

1713 · 1784

Gather all human knowledge in the Encyclopédie.

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Hypatia

c. 360 · c. 415

Mathematician and philosopher, head of the school of Alexandria.

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Seneca

c. 4 BC · c. 65

It is not that we have little time, but that we waste much.

Philosophers