Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

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

Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.

Virtue she finds too painful an endeavour, content to dwell in decencies for ever.

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter could be said to remedy anything.

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

Hate has no place in the house of God.

Renunciation remains sorrow, though a sorrow borne willingly.

You know, nothing is more important than education, because nowhere are our stakes higher; our future depends on the quality of education of our children today.

If proud Americans can be who they are and boldly stand at the altar with who they love then surely, surely we can give everyone in this country a fair chance at that great American Dream.

It is easy to get everything you want, provided you first learn to do without the things you cannot get.

There is no darkness but ignorance.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.

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

The Lord can give, and the Lord can take away. I might be herding sheep next year.

Knowledge is power.

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.

The book, ’12 Rules For Life,‘ is a very serious book. There’s elements of humor in it, but I’m trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it’s necessary to live a upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there’s hell to pay if you don’t do that.

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven’t and don’t.

Peace if possible, truth at all costs.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

To do nothing is also a good remedy.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

Regrets are the natural property of grey hairs.

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

For my own part, I would rather excel in knowledge of the highest secrets of philosophy than in arms.

Hatreds not vowed and concealed are to be feared more than those openly declared.

A clever man commits no minor blunders.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

He who gives away shall have real gain. He who subdues himself shall be free; he shall cease to be a slave of passions. The righteous man casts off evil, and by rooting out lust, bitterness, and illusion do we reach Nirvana.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

We are not the sum of our possessions.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

Too often in life, something happens and we blame other people for us not being happy or satisfied or fulfilled. So the point is, we all have choices, and we make the choice to accept people or situations or to not accept situations.

Keep in mind that no matter how perfectly you get your life in order, you will never be rid of all your problems. Problems are a way of life, always have been, always will be. But how you elect to view those problems is all up to you.

Man consists of two parts, his mind and his body, only the body has more fun.

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?

People always fear change. People feared electricity when it was invented, didn’t they? People feared coal, they feared gas-powered engines… There will always be ignorance, and ignorance leads to fear. But with time, people will come to accept their silicon masters.

Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

Since we cannot know all that there is to be known about anything, we ought to know a little about everything.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

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

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.

He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich.

Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.

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

A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.

Our pleasures were simple – they included survival.

Infinites, when considered absolutely without any restriction or limitation, are neither equal nor unequal, nor have any certain proportion one to another, and therefore, the principle that all infinites are equal is a precarious one.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.