The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches. The wrong comes when riches possess men.

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.

Someone has to die in order that the rest of us should value life more.

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes‘ palaces.

Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them.

Nothing is further than earth from heaven, and nothing is nearer than heaven to earth.

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

I don’t want to get into it, but if you know someone, it doesn’t mean you agree with everything they say or they do.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

Thinking isn’t agreeing or disagreeing. That’s voting.

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

As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

When I was running training, we would fire a couple of leaders from every SEAL team because they couldn’t lead. And 99.9% of the time, it wasn’t a question of their ability – it was a question of their ability to listen.

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

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

If I’d had good discipline, I might have gone into music.

We enjoy the process far more than the proceeds.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God – but to create him.

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

People don’t realize that we, we meaning people in show business, have the same problems as everyone else. Money doesn’t change that. Fame doesn’t change that. Sometimes that brings on more problems. You know, it’s just a different kind of problems.

Risk comes from not knowing what you’re doing.

If you were to ask me to choose between democratic values and wealth, power, prosperity and fame, I will very easily and without any doubt choose democratic values.

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

I think that we all know what evil is. We have a sense of what’s evil, and certainly killing innocent people is evil. We’re less sure about what is good. There’s sort of good, good enough, could be better – but absolute good is a little harder to define.

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

I don’t look at a man who’s expert in one area as a specialist. I look at him as a rookie in ten other areas.

On some positions, Cowardice asks the question, ‚Is it safe?‘ Expediency asks the question, ‚Is it politic?‘ And Vanity comes along and asks the question, ‚Is it popular?‘ But Conscience asks the question, ‚Is it right?‘

I’m not a marketing person. I don’t ask myself questions. I go by instinct.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

The only passion that guides me is for the truth… I look at everything from this point of view.

What is normal? Normal was yesterday. If you lose a leg, one day you’re hopping around on one leg, so you know the difference.

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.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

I don’t believe in death, neither in flesh nor in spirit.

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

There was something undifferentiated and yet complete, which existed before Heaven and Earth. Soundless and formless, it depends on nothing and does not change. It operates everywhere and is free from danger. It may be considered the mother of the universe. I do not know its name; I call it Tao.

Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare – something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state – something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

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

The issues a president faces are not black and white, and cannot be boiled down into 140 characters. Because when you have the nuclear codes at your fingertips and the military at your command, you can’t make snap decisions. You can’t have a thin skin or the tendency to lash out.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.

Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face nothing new under the sun.

Learn to think continentally.