There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.

Men may change their climate, but they cannot change their nature. A man that goes out a fool cannot ride or sail himself into common sense.

There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge – that is everywhere.

Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort.

If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you’re just one more deluded Pollyanna.

Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.

There is no wealth but life.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

The object of the superior man is truth.

A subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie, deliberate, contrived and dishonest, but the myth, persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

All of us are in the same place, each with our own rooms, and we were allowed to do whatever we wanted. Which is totally different than college, where they manage your schedule for you. In the NBA, you’re on your own.

The formula ‚Two and two make five‘ is not without its attractions.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Speak the truth, do not yield to anger; give, if thou art asked for little; by these three steps thou wilt go near the gods.

If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.

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

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.

All the learnin‘ my father paid for was a bit o‘ birch at one end and an alphabet at the other.

That government is best which governs least.

The older I get the more wisdom I find in the ancient rule of taking first things first. A process which often reduces the most complex human problem to a manageable proportion.

Many men have been capable of doing a wise thing, more a cunning thing, but very few a generous thing.

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

I tell people, and it’s the truth, I could sit in my garage for a week and it won’t make me a car. And you can sit in church till your bottom is flat and that won’t make you a servant of Christ.

The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

Our diversity is our strength. What a dull and pointless life it would be if everyone was the same.

Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don’t go away, they just echo around.

As a single withered tree, if set aflame, causes a whole forest to burn, so does a rascal son destroy a whole family.

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

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

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.

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

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

I don’t really have a gimmick or a ‚thing.‘ I’m one of the few artists who gets to be himself every day.

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.

So near is falsehood to truth that a wise man would do well not to trust himself on the narrow edge.

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

The only answer to fear is faith in God, knowing He loves you unconditionally and individually.

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

Everyone should be respected as an individual, but no one idolized.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.