We’re all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

What is the Tao Te Ching? Five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a God-realized being named Lao-tzu in ancient China dictated 81 verses which are regarded by many as the ultimate commentary on the nature of existence.

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment’s grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one’s life.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

We’re all sinners. Everybody you meet all over the world is a sinner.

With Kansas, I had a four-year deal. The initial two months were real tough. I had to adjust a lot. Then, things started looking up.

Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out til too late that he’s been playing with two queens all along.

In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those contracted by the body.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

To the dumb question, ‚Why me?‘ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‚Why not?‘

Sisters are brittle things. God was penurious with me, which makes me shrewd with Him. One is a dainty sum! One bird, one cage, one flight; one song in those far woods, as yet suspected by faith only!

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

If one has the answers to all the questions – that is the proof that God is not with him. It means that he is a false prophet using religion for himself. The great leaders of the people of God, like Moses, have always left room for doubt. You must leave room for the Lord, not for our certainties; we must be humble.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

Our life is made by the death of others.

I do put a lot of God in my music, but not because I’m super religious. There are a lot of demons in my music, too. I acknowledge both.

Man was made at the end of the week’s work, when God was tired.

Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

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.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

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

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.

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.

Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth.

Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.

Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.

Humanity I love you because when you’re hard up you pawn your intelligence to buy a drink.

We all want progress, but if you’re on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?

Nature is not human hearted.

The Global Fund is a central player in the progress being achieved on HIV, TB and malaria. It channels resources to help countries fight these diseases. I believe in its impact because I have seen it firsthand.

The progress of India is the destiny of one-sixth of humanity. And it will also mean a world more confident of its prosperity and more secure about its future.

God isn’t compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness.

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

Begin – to begin is half the work, let half still remain; again begin this, and thou wilt have finished.

A man’s character is his guardian divinity.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

Start with God – the first step in learning is bowing down to God; only fools thumb their noses at such wisdom and learning.

And so our goal on health care is, if we can get, instead of health care costs going up 6 percent a year, it’s going up at the level of inflation, maybe just slightly above inflation, we’ve made huge progress. And by the way, that is the single most important thing we could do in terms of reducing our deficit. That’s why we did it.

The blame is his who chooses: God is blameless.

It is not, of course, complete yet – but some sentences were understood this afternoon… I feel that I have at last struck the solution of a great problem – and the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas – and friends converse with each other without leaving home.

If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God’s universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves.

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

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.