Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.

Great minds are related to the brief span of time during which they live as great buildings are to a little square in which they stand: you cannot see them in all their magnitude because you are standing too close to them.

All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence, and then success is sure.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.

A witty saying proves nothing.

My mother used to tell me man gives the award, God gives the reward. I don’t need another plaque.

Friendship often ends in love, but love in friendship – never.

Sometimes the majority just means all the fools are on the same side.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.

It is not well to make great changes in old age.

People until I was 60 would always say they thought I looked younger, which I think, without flattering myself, I did, but I think I certainly have, as George Orwell says people do after a certain age, the face they deserve.

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

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

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Tina Turner is someone that I admire, because she made her strength feminine and sexy. Marilyn Monroe, because she was a curvy woman. I’m drawn to things that have the same kind of silhouettes as what she wore because our bodies are similar.

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

Do not ask for what you will wish you had not got.

No man who worships education has got the best out of education… Without a gentle contempt for education no man’s education is complete.

That government is best which governs least.

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.

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.

Nothing cannot exist forever.

There’s no one thing that is true. They’re all true.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

Some old men, continually praise the time of their youth. In fact, you would almost think that there were no fools in their days, but unluckily they themselves are left as an example.

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

That is never too often repeated, which is never sufficiently learned.

Ignorance, the root and stem of all evil.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

We are not the sum of our possessions.

There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable, and praised when they are not praiseworthy.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

Whatever is well said by another, is mine.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

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.

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

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

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

Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.

But Satan now is wiser than of yore, and tempts by making rich, not making poor.

Nothing is more terrible than to see ignorance in action.

Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.

We can’t all be heroes, because somebody has to sit on the curb and applaud when they go by.

It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment’s grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one’s life.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.