Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

Things in themselves have no life in them. A car can’t comfort or encourage you. A house means nothing if there’s no life and love inside.

To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father.

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself. But mankind wasn’t always so lucky. Less than a century ago, men and women did not have easy access to the puzzle boxes within them.

The world itself is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power – and nothing else!

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.

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.

All men are equal before fish.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

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

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

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

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by somekind of cosmic lawgiver.

What was God doing before the divine creation?

Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.

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

My philosophy is simple: It’s a down-home, common, horse-sense approach to things.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

Time stays, we go.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.

I still think like a Marxist in many ways.

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

No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.

Nothing can be divided into more parts than it can possibly be constituted of. But matter (i.e. finite) cannot be constituted of infinite parts.

You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also… your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Life is warfare.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

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.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

If you understand the universe, you control it, in a way.

I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective.

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

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

Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

He who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.