If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that’s all. So we direct our values to material things.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.

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

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

The universe is not indifferent to our existence – it depends on it.

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

Better a little which is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.

But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.

If I had only one sermon to preach it would be a sermon against pride.

The career of a sage is of two kinds: He is either honored by all in the world, Like a flower waving its head, Or else he disappears into the silent forest.

The wise use of your freedom to make your own decisions is crucial to your spiritual growth, now and for eternity.

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

Darn the wheel of the world! Why must it continually turn over? Where is the reverse gear?

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

The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can’t expect an angel to look out.

Error is always more busy than truth.

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learned something from yesterday.

Anything I’ve ever said, I certainly was feeling at the time.

Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both.

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

Since God created the world, He also created reality.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?

Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

If you’re in a forest, the quality of the echo is very strange because echoes back off so many surfaces of all those trees that you get this strange, itchy ricochet effect.

The first forty years of life give us the text; the next thirty supply the commentary on it.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

I have wondered about time all my life.

Blessed are the people whose leaders can look destiny in the eye without flinching but also without attempting to play God.

I don’t have the best track record with quotes.

If it’s a penny for your thoughts and you put in your two cents worth, then someone, somewhere is making a penny.

The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.

It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it – this is knowledge.

The unnatural, that too is natural.

It is best to love wisely, no doubt; but to love foolishly is better than not to be able to love at all.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

That’s another hallmark of truth, is that it snaps things together. People write to me all the time and say it’s as if things were coming together in my mind. It’s like the Platonic idea that all learning was remembering. You have a nature, and when you feel that nature articulated, it’s it’s like the act of snapping the puzzle pieces together.

Be smarter than other people, just don’t tell them so.

We have two ears and one tongue so that we would listen more and talk less.

The great question of our time is, ‚Will we be motivated by materialistic philosophy or by spiritual power?‘

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.