Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

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

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.

There’s this lingering philosophy that movie stars shouldn’t do TV.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

The people made worse off by slavery were those who were enslaved. Their descendants would have been worse off today if born in Africa instead of America. Put differently, the terrible fate of their ancestors benefitted them.

In ancient times cats were worshipped as gods; they have not forgotten this.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

While children are struggling to be unique, the world around them is trying all means to make them look like everybody else.

Evolution has ensured that our brains just aren’t equipped to visualise 11 dimensions directly. However, from a purely mathematical point of view it’s just as easy to think in 11 dimensions, as it is to think in three or four.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

I don’t pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors. It is the democracy of the dead. Tradition refuses to submit to that arrogant oligarchy who merely happen to be walking around.

Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.

Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.

We might as well die as to go on living like this.

It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.

We are anthill men upon an anthill world.

The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement, many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.

You are the universe, you aren’t in the universe.

In the last analysis, even the best man is evil: in the last analysis, even the best woman is bad.

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit.

Auschwitz stands as a tragic reminder of the terrible potential man has for violence and inhumanity.

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.

In the ’70s, terrorism was much more serious, in that many more people got killed.

The only justification for repressive institutions is material and cultural deficit. But such institutions, at certain stages of history, perpetuate and produce such a deficit, and even threaten human survival.

Every human being is under construction from conception to death.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

There seems to be some perverse human characteristic that likes to make easy things difficult.

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

The entering class I joined in 1956 included just nine women, up from five in the then second-year class, and only one African American. All professors, in those now-ancient days, were of the same race and sex.

Even in high school I was very interested in history – why people do the things they do. As a kid I spent a lot of time trying to relate the past to the present.

I think being an atheist is something you are, not something you do.

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

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

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

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

Why is it that we rejoice at a birth and grieve at a funeral? It is because we are not the person involved.

I am against nature. I don’t dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can’t touch with decay.

SEALs are human beings. We may all have the same haircuts, but we aren’t robots. Some SEALs are great people. Some are not great people. Some have done unspeakably terrible things. You’re dealing with different people, different dreams, different desires.

I’m happy being myself, which I’ve never been before. I always hid in other people, or tried to find myself through the characters, or live out their lives, but I didn’t have those things in mine.

I have always hated slavery, I think, as much as any abolitionist. I have been an Old Line Whig. I have always hated it, but I have always been quiet about it until this new era of the introduction of the Nebraska Bill began.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

Our human compassion binds us the one to the other – not in pity or patronizingly, but as human beings who have learnt how to turn our common suffering into hope for the future.

Man is fully responsible for his nature and his choices.

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

If… many influential people have failed to understand, or have just forgotten, what we were up against in the Cold War and how we overcame it, they are not going to be capable of securing, let alone enlarging, the gains that liberty has made.

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.