Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

Change alone is unchanging.

I boldly assert, in fact I think I know, that a lot of friendships and connections absolutely depend upon a sort of shared language, or slang. Not necessarily designed to exclude others, this can establish a certain comity and, even after a long absence, re-establish it in a second.

My father had died, and very swiftly, too, of cancer of the esophagus. He was 79. I am 61. In whatever kind of a ‚race‘ life may be, I have very abruptly become a finalist.

I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

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

We are anthill men upon an anthill world.

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

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?

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.

When I got somethin‘ to say, I’ll say it.

Life is a series of commas, not periods.

Few men would dare to read their own autobiography if all their deeds were recorded in it; few can look back upon their entire career without a blush.

I hold a lot of things in. I’m always making sure everybody is okay. I usually don’t rage; I usually don’t curse. So for me, it’s a great thing to be able to scream and say whatever I want.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

The essence of lying is in deception, not in words.

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

There is no such thing as Something for nothing.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

Many a man fails as an original thinker simply because his memory it too good.

I am a good listener. I think that came from my schooling.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.

Is it not strange that desire should so many years outlive performance?

To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

We are not the sum of our possessions.

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.

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

How to drive a guy crazy: send him a telegram and on the top put ‚page 2.‘

At best, the renewal of broken relations is a nervous matter.

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.

My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger.

An overflow of good converts to bad.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

Who would set a limit to the mind of man? Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

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

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

The American public’s a lot more sophisticated than we all give them credit for. And on complicated issues, I’m going to give them straight answers. And if it takes more than three minutes, I’m going to do it.

Knowledge is true opinion.

These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

By indignities men come to dignities.

The way I talk is bizarre.

‚Thursday‘ is a conceptual album. Whatever that situation was, I spent the whole album focusing on that situation.

It may happen sometimes that a long debate becomes the cause of a longer friendship. Commonly, those who dispute with one another at last agree.

I very much believe the Internet is indeed all it is cracked up to be.

When people are connected, we can just do some great things. They have the opportunity to get access to jobs, education, health, communications. We have the opportunity to bring the people we care about closer to us. It really makes a big difference.

A room without books is like a body without a soul.

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

Writing is good, thinking is better. Cleverness is good, patience is better.

When I talked to him on the phone yesterday. I called him George rather than Mr. Vice President. But, in public, it’s Mr. Vice President, because that is who he is.

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.

The countenance is the portrait of the soul, and the eyes mark its intentions.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

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.