Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

The story being told in ‚Star Wars‘ is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again. Power corrupts, and when you’re in charge, you start doing things that you think are right, but they’re actually not.

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become.

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one’s being added to that being.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

Dispassionate objectivity is itself a passion, for the real and for the truth.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too.

My philosophy in life is, Decide what you want to do. You have to have something to hope for.

One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

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?

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

To live is to think.

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

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

Is science of any value? I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.

Intolerance betrays want of faith in one’s cause.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

If you’re lying, you’re lying.

You do ill if you praise, but worse if you censure, what you do not understand.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

Gold is good in its place; but loving, brave, patriotic men are better than gold.

‚Tis better to bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.

It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.

Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any.

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.

No other country in the world does what we do. On every issue, the world turns to us, not simply because of the size of our economy or our military might – but because of the ideals we stand for, and the burdens we bear to advance them.

Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one’s temper and disturb one’s quiet.

If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

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

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

All that I know most surely about morality and obligations I owe to football.

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

Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.

There are only two lasting bequests we can hope to give our children. One of these is roots, the other, wings.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

Honesty is the best policy – when there is money in it.

There is some self-interest behind every friendship. There is no friendship without self-interests. This is a bitter truth.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

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