Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Silence is the mother of truth.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

People tend to think that life really does progress for everyone eventually, that people progress, but actually only some people progress. The rest of the people don’t.

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

I always want to listen to people and receive good criticism, but I just don’t have to answer to them; I have to answer to God.

Trust not yourself, but your defects to know, make use of every friend and every foe.

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.

I know you’ve heard it a thousand times before. But it’s true – hard work pays off. If you want to be good, you have to practice, practice, practice. If you don’t love something, then don’t do it.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.

It takes time to persuade men to do even what is for their own good.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

The pursuit of truth does not permit violence on one’s opponent.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

I am invariably late for appointments – sometimes as much as two hours. I’ve tried to change my ways but the things that make me late are too strong, and too pleasing.

Honor is the reward of virtue.

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.

The more you seek the uncomfortable, the more you will become comfortable.

A nation or civilization that continues to produce soft-minded men purchases its own spiritual death on the installment plan.

Plenty of people wish to become devout, but no one wishes to be humble.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

I have an existential map. It has ‚You are here‘ written all over it.

Just do what must be done. This may not be happiness, but it is greatness.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people, and do our best to help them find their own grace. That’s what I strive to do, that’s what I pray to do every day.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.

The best way to sell yourself to others is first to sell the others to yourself.

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

It is never too late to give up our prejudices.

Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

I could not do what I do, and teach a class, and never miss a deadline, never be late for anything if I was a lush, OK? I would really love to read a piece that said, ‚He is not a lush.‘ That would be fabulous, it would be a first, I could show it to people and say, ‚Look!‘

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.

It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right.

I never – you know also one of the things that would save me for a man my age, it was not that easy to lose that much weight and fall down and look like something draped.

I made a commitment to completely cut out drinking and anything that might hamper me from getting my mind and body together. And the floodgates of goodness have opened upon me – spiritually and financially.

Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.

Fresh activity is the only means of overcoming adversity.

A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.

Your success, or lack of success, is your responsibility. Even when you have a chain of command that you don’t like as well, its your responsibility to work with the up chain of command.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

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

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

Fear clogs; faith liberates.

Let go of yesterday.

If you want to be a voice for peace in the world, begin by making peace a permanent condition of your own life.

Sin, also for those who don’t have faith, exists when one goes against one’s conscience. To listen to and obey it means, in fact, to decide in face of what is perceived as good or evil. And on this decision pivots the goodness or malice of our action.

The formula ‚Two and two make five‘ is not without its attractions.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.