What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly – that is the first law of nature.

North Americans don’t understand… that our country is not just Cuba; our country is also humanity.

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.

All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.

For the sake of peace and justice, let us move toward a world in which all people are at last free to determine their own destiny.

If there are people you haven’t forgiven, you’re not going to really awaken. You have to let go.

We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

Make the best use of what is in your power, and take the rest as it happens.

We are punished by our sins, not for them.

You have to give others the opportunity to love who you love. If they don’t accept it, it’s their loss.

Let’s embrace being not normal!

If you’re going to wake up early all the time, and you’re working hard, and you’re working out, sometimes you’re going to get tired. It’s OK. It’s acceptable – somewhat. We’re all human, unfortunately.

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies – it is the first law of nature.

In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

It’s not that I’m afraid to die. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate… but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

All you need to do to be my friend is like me.

Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception.

Our God is a forgiving God.

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

We’ve gotta become the Martians. I’m a Martian – I tell you to become Martians. And we’ve gotta go to Mars and civilize Mars and build a whole civilization on Mars and then move out, 300 years from now into the universe. And when we do that, we have a chance of living forever.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

The Mind that lies fallow but a single Day, sprouts up in Follies that are only to be killed by a constant and assiduous Culture.

Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn‘ fool if they weren’t.

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.

I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

You pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too. That’s a part of it.

Show me the person you honor, for I know better by that the kind of person you are. For you show me what your idea of humanity is.

The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one.

Upon the creatures we have made, we are, ourselves, at last, dependent.

My parents taught me never to judge others based on whom they love, what color their skin is, or their religion.

Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.

There are nights when the wolves are silent and only the moon howls.

Whatever I will become will be what God has chosen for me.

If there are dreams about a beautiful South Africa, there are also roads that lead to their goal. Two of these roads could be named Goodness and Forgiveness.

Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.

I try to teach through my opinions, through my speeches, how wrong it is to judge people on the basis of what they look like, color of their skin, whether they’re men or women.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

It’s good to remember that in crises, natural crises, human beings forget for awhile their ignorances, their biases, their prejudices. For a little while, neighbors help neighbors and strangers help strangers.

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.

When we’re looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.

Water’s never clumsy.

Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.

Forgiveness is not a one-time thing that happened the day you received Christ. It is an everyday thing, for the rest of your life.

In God’s family, there are no outsiders, no enemies.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

In the Spring, I have counted 136 different kinds of weather inside of 24 hours.

When it’s your time, it is your time.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

I know people said I wasn’t selling out in America, but that was entirely untrue. We sold out all over the world, and every night I looked out into the fans and those front rows that you’re talking about, the tears, the honesty, the inability to not be completely overjoyed because they felt accepted.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.

Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive.

It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a homogeneous representation of the universe. We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.