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

And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since early childhood.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

How can one preach goodness and love to men without at the same time offering them an interpretation of the World that justifies this goodness and this love?

Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

All truth is simple… is that not doubly a lie?

A man’s felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.

My philosophy in life is, Decide what you want to do. You have to have something to hope for.

Where there is no opposition to evil, it multiplies.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be.

That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle, that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail, that will to be rightful must be reasonable; that the minority possess their equal rights, which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.

It’s human nature to not say everything that’s on your mind at the time you think it. Because we fear saying something that people will laugh at, people will think is dumb. We’re afraid of being embarrassed.

The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

A jug fills drop by drop.

Non-violence is the article of faith.

Live one day at a time emphasizing ethics rather than rules.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

Man is a beautiful machine that works very badly.

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

When you have to kill a man, it costs nothing to be polite.

To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father.

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

Some may remember, if you have good memories, that there used to be a concept in Anglo-American law called a presumption of innocence, innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Now that’s so deep in history that there’s no point even bringing it up, but it did once exist.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

Principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.

Time stays, we go.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

It is right to give every man his due.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

The fact is that a man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.

If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you’re just one more deluded Pollyanna.

Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.