Life Motto Quiz
Questions: 16 · 10 minutes
1. What is the central inference behind Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am”?
Careful thought guarantees that every conclusion is correct.
Only philosophers can know that they exist.
The act of doubting confirms the existence of the thinker.
The physical world can never be known in any way.
2. Who formulated the philosophical statement commonly translated as “I think, therefore I am”?
Baruch Spinoza
John Locke
Blaise Pascal
René Descartes
3. Which leader reported his swift victory at Zela with the phrase “Veni, vidi, vici” (“I came, I saw, I conquered”)?
Alexander the Great
Augustus
Julius Caesar
Hannibal
4. A fact-checker is reviewing the claim that Marie Antoinette said “Let them eat cake.” What is the best-supported conclusion?
There is no reliable evidence that she said it, and a similar story appeared before it was linked to her.
She said it in a recorded speech during the French Revolution.
She wrote it in a letter to King Louis XVI.
She borrowed it from a documented remark by Napoleon Bonaparte.
5. Which U.S. president said, “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country” in his inaugural address?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
John F. Kennedy
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Lyndon B. Johnson
6. The inaugural declaration “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself” belongs to which president?
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Harry S. Truman
Theodore Roosevelt
Woodrow Wilson
7. A researcher tracing the ancient literary roots of “Fortune favors the bold” encounters “Audentes fortuna iuvat.” In whose epic does that Latin line appear?
Homer’s “Iliad”
Ovid’s “Metamorphoses”
Virgil’s “Aeneid”
Dante’s “Divine Comedy”
8. An editor needs the maxim associated with Francis Bacon’s Latin observation that knowledge itself is power. Which option should the editor select?
“Wisdom begins in wonder.”
“The truth will set you free.”
“Knowledge itself is power.”
“Man is the measure of all things.”
9. The expression “Carpe diem,” usually rendered as “Seize the day,” comes from the work of which Roman poet?
Ovid
Horace
Virgil
Juvenal
10. A museum label says Socrates personally coined “Know thyself.” Which revision is historically more careful?
It was coined by Plato for the opening of “The Republic.”
It was a Delphic maxim later closely associated with Socratic philosophy.
It first appeared in a letter written by Aristotle.
It was originally a Roman military slogan used by Caesar.
11. After a serious setback, a team adopts a motto about retaining agency over its response. Which line comes from William Ernest Henley’s poem “Invictus”?
“Hope is the thing with feathers.”
“I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”
“The child is father of the man.”
“No man is an island.”
12. Who is conventionally associated with the revolutionary declaration “Give me liberty, or give me death!”?
Thomas Paine
Benjamin Franklin
Samuel Adams
Patrick Henry
13. A student cites “To thine own self be true” as advice spoken directly by Shakespeare. Which character actually delivers the line in “Hamlet”?
Polonius
Horatio
Claudius
Hamlet
14. In Plato’s “Apology,” who argues that “the unexamined life is not worth living”?
Aristotle
Plato, speaking as himself
Epicurus
Socrates
15. A graduation speaker wants a historical call to persistence that also allows yielding to “convictions of honour and good sense.” Which line fits that context?
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
“Give me liberty, or give me death!”
“Ask not what your country can do for you…”
“Never give in, never give in, never, never, never…”
16. Maya handles a setback by listing what she can control—her judgments and actions—and what she cannot control, such as other people’s choices. Whose teaching does this most directly reflect?
Epictetus
Niccolò Machiavelli
Thomas Hobbes
Jean-Jacques Rousseau