No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.

There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

Life is wasted on the living.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

Either the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it and place it where the public mind shall rest in the belief that it is in course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will push it forward, till it shall become alike lawful in all the States – old as well as new – North as well as South.

It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

I do think that Magna Carta and international law are worth paying some attention to.

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.

I played by the rules of politics as I found them.

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

Existence precedes and rules essence.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

The U.S. immigration laws are bad – really, really bad. I’d say treatment of immigrants is one of the greatest injustices done in our government’s name.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

I do think there should be some regulations on AI.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

I repeat… that all power is a trust; that we are accountable for its exercise; that from the people and for the people all springs, and all must exist.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

For Forms of Government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

Nobody is above the law. Imagine if there allegations against Modi and he is the Prime Minister. Should the case not be pursued just because he has become the PM. It should not be so that it should be stopped. I am not above the law.

It is natural to die as to be born.

In a democracy, the majority of the citizens is capable of exercising the most cruel oppressions upon the minority.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it.

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

If the American people don’t love me, their descendants will.

I am opposed to the accumulation of executive power anywhere.

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

Error is always more busy than truth.

We must accept what science tells us, that man was born from the earth. But, more logical than the scientists who lecture us, we must carry this lesson to its conclusion: that is to say, accept that man was born entirely from the world – not only his flesh and bones but his incredible power of thought.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

I like policy – call me a nerd.

To rule a country of a thousand chariots, there must be reverent attention to business, and sincerity; economy in expenditure, and love for men; and the employment of the people at the proper seasons.

My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two.

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.