I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.

No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

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

Of two evils, choose neither.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

Life is warfare.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

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

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

There is nothing permanent except change.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

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

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

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

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.

Which death is preferably to every other? ‚The unexpected‘.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

Thought is the parent of the deed.

Where a man can live, he can also live well.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‚War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.‘

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, – till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

The natural desire of good men is knowledge.

The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life’s wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion.

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

We might as well die as to go on living like this.

Truth is a pathless land.

I am against nature. I don’t dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can’t touch with decay.

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

Sorry, I’m still a dialectical materialist.

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

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

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

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.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

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.