All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Why am I here? I’m not lucky. That’s God.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.

Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.

I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.

Freedom is what everyone wants – to be able to act and live with freedom. But the only way to get to a place of freedom is through discipline.

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

The best way to cheer yourself up is to try to cheer somebody else up.

I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like.

More compassionate mind, more sense of concern for other’s well-being, is source of happiness.

I have made a few mistakes early on that I admit myself, and there have been times when I have gone over the top and done things that you shouldn’t do in international cricket, but that’s how you learn.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

If a man reaches the heart of his own religion, he has reached the heart of the others, too. There is only one God, and there are many paths to him.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

I just really believe people have to get hungry. I think maybe what we need to do, instead of trying to stuff our beliefs down people’s throats, is just pray for them to really be hungry and to see their neediness.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

I think God gives every one of us our own will, and unfortunately, some people choose to do evil things with it.

If I’d had some set idea of a finish line, don’t you think I would have crossed it years ago?

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.

I’m not a natural born performer.

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

Sincere Christians can disagree about the details of Scripture and theology – absolutely.

You might well remember that nothing can bring you success but yourself.

If you have the ability to pick yourself up by the bootstraps and start over, you come out stronger because you learn from whatever mistakes you made.

The noblest search is the search for excellence.

Courage is like love; it must have hope for nourishment.

This is the truth: as from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

Let us train our minds to desire what the situation demands.

I am not promising that God will give you everything you want. There are times when we want things that God knows would not be good for us.

Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.

It doesn’t matter where you come from, what you have or don’t have, what you lack, or what you have too much of. But all you need to have is faith in God, an undying passion for what you do and what you choose to do in this life, and a relentless drive and the will to do whatever it takes to be successful in whatever you put your mind to.

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

It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don’t throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.

As long as your body is healthy and under control and death is distant, try to save your soul; when death is immanent what can you do?

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

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

You can’t be happy by doing something groovy.

I love playing ego and insecurity combined.

God has equipped you to handle difficult things. In fact, He has already planted the seeds of discipline and self-control inside you. You just have to water those seeds with His Word to make them grow!

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

There’s definitely going to be things that I’m not very good at, things I can improve.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

I used to say to my late wife, ‚I have great faith in the American people.‘

For me, education was power.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

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

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

If evil be spoken of you and it be true, correct yourself, if it be a lie, laugh at it.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.