Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

It’s the philosophies of being an athlete that carry me today.

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.

The great question of our time is, ‚Will we be motivated by materialistic philosophy or by spiritual power?‘

When we talk about mortality, we are talking about our children.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

Magnanimity in politics is not seldom the truest wisdom; and a great empire and little minds go ill together.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.

Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.

No one but a fool is always right.

I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long. I call it ‚Le Milieu Divin,‘ but I am being careful to include nothing esoteric and the minimum of explicit philosophy.

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men… We are who we are because they were who they were. It’s wise to know where you come from, who called your name.

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

Beauty and folly are old companions.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.

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

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

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

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.

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

Man is a universe within himself.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Good fame is like fire; when you have kindled you may easily preserve it; but if you extinguish it, you will not easily kindle it again.

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.

There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

We must accept what science tells us, that man was born from the earth. But, more logical than the scientists who lecture us, we must carry this lesson to its conclusion: that is to say, accept that man was born entirely from the world – not only his flesh and bones but his incredible power of thought.

A useless life is an early death.

If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.

Silence is the mother of truth.

Where sense is wanting, everything is wanting.

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

There is only a finger’s difference between a wise man and a fool.

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.

Virtue is like a rich stone, best plain set.

There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, ‚Truth is the daughter of Time.‘

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.

Plato is my friend; Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.

Men in general are quick to believe that which they wish to be true.