Justice… is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed.

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

I think some of my colleagues‘ spicier lines are distracting. They draw attention away from what the justice is trying to say.

That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that’s how we’ve got to live.

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.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

I would never do a commercial if I thought it was offensive to anyone.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

Nothing can be more abhorrent to democracy than to imprison a person or keep him in prison because he is unpopular. This is really the test of civilization.

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.

Things in themselves have no life in them. A car can’t comfort or encourage you. A house means nothing if there’s no life and love inside.

I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.

Justice consists in doing no injury to men; decency in giving them no offense.

It is better to take what does not belong to you than to let it lie around neglected.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

You’ve got to reach a hand of friendship across the aisle and across philosophies in this country.

The law will never make a man free; it is men who have got to make the law free.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

Free trade is not based on utility but on justice.

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now – always.

The philosophical question before us is, when we make an observation of our track in the past, does the result of our observation become real in the same sense that the final state would be defined if an outside observer were to make the observation?

Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.

Which death is preferably to every other? ‚The unexpected‘.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.

There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.

Success consecrates the most offensive crimes.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

And yet it moves.

Justice is what is established; and thus all our established laws will necessarily be regarded as just without examination, since they are established.

The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them when they are invaded.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For 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.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

Good jokes are gems. A good idea is hard to come by. I couldn’t give them to someone else, even for money. It just wouldn’t seem right.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

Men should be either treated generously or destroyed, because they take revenge for slight injuries – for heavy ones they cannot.

And, after all, what is a lie? ‚Tis but the truth in a masquerade.

Use, do not abuse… neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?

Honor has not to be won; it must only not be lost.

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.