I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

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

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

There is a need for aloneness, which I don’t think most people realise for an actor. It’s almost having certain kinds of secrets for yourself that you’ll let the whole world in on only for a moment, when you’re acting. But everybody is always tugging at you. They’d all like sort of a chunk of you.

There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

What’s the good of drawing in the next breath if all you do is let it out and draw in another?

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.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.

My philosophy is, it’s always very rewarding when you can make an audience laugh. I don’t mind making fun of myself. I like self-deprecating comedy. But I’d like you to laugh with me occasionally, too.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.

I wish I knew why I am so anguished.

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

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

The example that America knows how to govern itself is one of the compelling aspects of our national security.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

No one knows Anne’s better side, and that’s why most people can’t stand me. Oh, I can be an amusing clown for an afternoon, but after that, everyone’s had enough of me to last a month.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

Nothing cannot exist forever.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

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?

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

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

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

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

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.

What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.

I don’t mind telling a dark side.

If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

There’s a rebel lying deep in my soul.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

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

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

You’re just left with yourself all the time, whatever you do anyway. You’ve got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It’s all down to you, mate.

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

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

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

Truth is what works.

All of my misfortunes come from having thought too well of my fellows.

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s freedom after it.

I’m interested in the dream and subconscious mind, the peculiar dream-like quality of our lives, sometime nightmare quality of our lives.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.