Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

Part of the reason there’s an injunction to the truth, for example, is that if you’re in a circumstance of extreme uncertainty, your best weapon, let’s say, or your best tool or your best defense is the truth, because it keeps things simpler.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

A system of morality which is based on relative emotional values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception which has nothing sound in it and nothing true.

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

Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly. And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.

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.

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

The passive aggressive arguer comes armed with tricky tactics. They cannot take the risk that they might be wrong: their self-esteem is too intertwined with their opinions. It is more important to affirm their rightness, and sense of superiority, than to arrive at the truth.

As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

Half a truth is better than no politics.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

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

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 in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.

The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.

I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective.

The chief ingredients in the composition of those qualities that gain esteem and praise, are good nature, truth, good sense, and good breeding.

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

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

Faith embraces many truths which seem to contradict each other.

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

Yet it is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

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

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

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

Assuming if there’s such a thing as reality, if you have a false relationship with it, how can you do anything but fail?

In whatever adulation you get, there’s truth and there’s not truth. And wherever they dog you, and they say it was horrible – there’s truth and there’s not truth. It’s human nature to like to read the adulation more.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

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

The truth is something that burns. It burns off dead wood. And people don’t like having the dead wood burnt off, often because they’re 95 percent dead wood.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

I was never ignorant, as far as being experienced in classrooms and learning about different subjects and actually soaking it up, so I checked into college for a little bit. I took classes at a community college in West L.A. I took psychology, English, and philosophy.

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

You don’t have to be scared of me, because I am loyal. Why are people so scared of creative ideas and so scared of truth? All I want to do is do good.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

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

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

Satire lies about literary men while they live and eulogy lies about them when they die.

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.