Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

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

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

Everyone assumes I practise all of my own laws but I don’t. I think anybody who did would be a horrible ugly person to be around.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

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.

I’m honest enough to say I don’t know everything. You know, I don’t. I don’t understand all of God. I don’t understand, you know, some kind of why bad things happen.

If you desire to be good, begin by believing that you are wicked.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

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

A useless life is an early death.

If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.

We should every night call ourselves to an account: what infirmity have I mastered today? what passions opposed? what temptation resisted? what virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

As long as you blame someone or something else – something outside you that’s bigger than you are – as the source of your problems, the problems won’t get solved.

It is better to do one’s own duty, however defective it may be, than to follow the duty of another, however well one may perform it. He who does his duty as his own nature reveals it, never sins.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

I’m not a natural born performer.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.

I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one’s memories.

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

I have an obsession with knowing the answers to things. When I don’t know what happened, it just bothers me, gets under my skin, and I need to write about it.

Certainly I’m not going to sit on the Internet all day and read what Sam from Iowa is saying about me. But I’m a sponge. I’ve always been a sponge.

Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

The narrow bandwidth of TV has made us think that we are stupider than we are.

In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life – or at least the way life should be.

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

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.

My lectures, based on Islamic teachings, were on various subjects. Some of the titles were, ‚The Intoxication of Life,‘ ‚The Purpose of Life,‘ ‚The Real Cause of Man’s Distress,‘ ‚The Journey to the Goal in Life,‘ and, one of my favorites, ‚The Heart of Man.‘ They contained important insights that spoke to something deep inside me.

One can not reflect in streaming water. Only those who know internal peace can give it to others.

Simply put, you believe that things or people make you unhappy, but this is not accurate. You make yourself unhappy.

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.

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two.

Evil is whatever distracts.

I’m very proud to be black, but black is not all I am. That’s my cultural historical background, my genetic makeup, but it’s not all of who I am nor is it the basis from which I answer every question.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.

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

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

And obviously, from our own personal point of view, the principal challenge is a personal challenge.

It was still quiet in the house, and not a sound was heard from outside, either. Were it not for this silence, my reverie would probably have been disrupted by reminders of daily duties, of getting up and going to school.

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.

Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.

All of us should be on guard against beliefs that flatter ourselves. At the very least, we should check such beliefs against facts.

I tend to overthink things. I’m not the guy who screams ‚This is a world smash!‘ when I finish a song.

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.