The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms – in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

A man may be so much of everything that he is nothing of anything.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

Loss is nothing else but change, and change is Nature’s delight.

Keep in mind that no matter how perfectly you get your life in order, you will never be rid of all your problems. Problems are a way of life, always have been, always will be. But how you elect to view those problems is all up to you.

With my childhood, it’s a wonder I’m not psychotic. I was the little Jewish boy in the non-Jewish neighborhood. It was a little like being the first Negro enrolled in the all-white school. I grew up in libraries and among books, without friends.

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

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

I don’t have to be what you want me to be.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness… and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

I give the name of cosmic sense to the more or less confused affinity that binds us psychologically to the All which envelops us. The existence of this feeling is indubitable, and apparently as old as the beginning of thought… The cosmic sense must have been born as soon as man found himself facing the forest, the sea and the stars.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

I have no interest in gender or race or anything like that. But everyone else is kind of, with their calculating – is this the exact right mix? I think that’s – to me it’s anti-comedy. It’s more about PC-nonsense.

It’s not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren’t doing.

Man’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.

If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.

America is a poem in our eyes; its ample geography dazzles the imagination, and it will not wait long for metres.

I want people to follow their dreams, yes… but I’m not interested in telling young black kids how to be rappers… I want to show them that there’s so many other paths you can take, besides a rapper or basketball player.

All of us are in the same place, each with our own rooms, and we were allowed to do whatever we wanted. Which is totally different than college, where they manage your schedule for you. In the NBA, you’re on your own.

Sometimes, people can be extraordinarily judgmental and closed-minded to anyone different or special, which is why it’s so hard for young people in this day and age to be comfortable enough in their own skin to not listen to the people picking on them.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

I have just got a new theory of eternity.

Reality has a way of intruding. Reality eventually intrudes on everything.

The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life’s wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

One of the most important things you learn from the Internet is that there is no ‚them‘ out there. It’s just an awful lot of ‚us.‘

There’s always going to be people who don’t understand or accept the united science, and I will just ignore them, as I’m only acting and communicating on the science.

How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

A toddling little girl is a centre of common feeling which makes the most dissimilar people understand each other.

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

At the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. On the cranky left, that is very annoying; I can see that.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

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

Like it or not, there are a lot of dance teachers in this country who respect me, whether they personally like me or not.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

The Son of God became incarnate in the souls of men to instill the feeling of brotherhood. All are brothers and all children of God.

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

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

Man is a universe within himself.

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.