The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

The object of the superior man is truth.

A boy carries out suggestions more wholeheartedly when he understands their aim.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

The ruling passion, be it what it will. The ruling passion conquers reason still.

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and establishing those properties by experiments, and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them.

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame.

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.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

Wisdom, compassion, and courage are the three universally recognized moral qualities of men.

You know how big love is? Love is big. love can hold anger; love can even hold hatred.

I love those who can smile in trouble, who can gather strength from distress, and grow brave by reflection. ‚Tis the business of little minds to shrink, but they whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves their conduct, will pursue their principles unto death.

Sin is geographical.

Listen, I think that people want a president who is going to be interested in the things that keep them up at night, the things that are weighing on them, the things that are debilitating and can be addressed.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

It’s very hard for our parents who see us enter a world that they can’t imagine.

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.

Truth is what works.

We are masters of the unsaid words, but slaves of those we let slip out.

I’m actually starting to like more and more people who have convictions that are unpopular.

There have been times that I’ve wept as I’ve gone from city to city and I’ve seen how far people have wandered from God.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

In this bright future you can’t forget your past.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

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

The first test of a truly great man is his humility. By humility I don’t mean doubt of his powers or hesitation in speaking his opinion, but merely an understanding of the relationship of what he can say and what he can do.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then.

Little things console us because little things afflict us.

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

I’ve never understood why people consider youth a time of freedom and joy. It’s probably because they have forgotten their own.

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.

Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.

It is the sign of a great mind to dislike greatness, and to prefer things in measure to things in excess.

Old age: the crown of life, our play’s last act.

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

What’s done can’t be undone.

There is no love of life without despair of life.

I don’t know how much longer I’ll be around. I’ll probably be writing when the Lord says, ‚Maya, Maya Angelou, it’s time.‘

No matter what message you are about to deliver somewhere, whether it is holding out a hand of friendship, or making clear that you disapprove of something, is the fact that the person sitting across the table is a human being, so the goal is to always establish common ground.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

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

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

Each day we understand better what the Indians say, and they us, so that very often we are intelligible to each other.

Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare – something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state – something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.

By the sole fact of his entering into ‚Thought,‘ man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion.