Award-winning artist Victor Hardy shares his favorite quotes from philosophers, including Socrates, Descartes, Friedrich, Kant, and more.
From Socrates and Descartes to Friedrich Nietzsche and Immanuel Kant, Victor Hardy, an award-winning artist from Austin, Texas, shares a number of his favorite quotes from some of the world’s most famous philosophers.
“‘The unexamined life is not worth living,’ said Socrates,” begins Hardy, speaking from his office in Austin, Texas, and touching first and foremost on one of his favorite quotes.
Another of Hardy’s favorite quotes from a famed philosopher is ‘I think therefore I am,’ courtesy of René Descartes. “‘Cogito, ergo sum,’ said Descartes,” he explains, “or, ‘I think therefore I am.'”
Victor Hardy’s other favorite philosophers include, he says, Friedrich Nietzsche, Heraclitus, and Immanuel Kant.
Friedrich Nietzsche is credited with the famous ‘God is dead!’ quote. “‘God is dead!’ said Nietzsche,” Hardy explains, “‘He remains dead! And we have killed him,'” adds the award-winning artist, completing the famous quote from the German philosopher, composer, poet, cultural critic, philologist, and Latin and Greek scholar.
Touching on another of his favorite quotes, Hardy turns to Kant. “‘Happiness,’ said Immanuel Kant,” he explains, “‘is not an ideal of reason but of imagination.'”
Other favorite philosophers of Hardy include Jean-Paul Sartre, Epicurus, Aristotle, and Plato, plus Seneca the Younger, Voltaire, and, again, Socrates, with the latter two responsible for the quotes ‘If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him,’ and ‘There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance,’ respectively.
Socrates was a Greek philosopher credited as one of the founders of philosophy in the West, while Voltaire was a French philosopher, writer, and historian famed for his wit.
“‘Even while they teach,’ said Seneca the Younger, meanwhile,” adds Hardy, turning to the words of the Roman Stoic philosopher, wrapping up, “‘men learn,’ – a quote, and indeed a philosophy, which, I believe, we should all strive to live by.”
Texas native Victor Hardy is an award-winning artist from the Texas state capital of Austin. Famed for his skills in miniature painting honed over the course of almost 30 years, Hardy has spoken at length about his background in art and the Roman Catholic iconography and imagery utilized in much of his work. The Austin-based artist also maintains a long-held passion for philosophy, the millennia-old field of study originating from an ancient Greek love of wisdom, loosely defined as the exploration of fundamental questions surrounding existence, knowledge, reason, language, values, and the mind.
