Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

To the dumb question, ‚Why me?‘ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‚Why not?‘

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.

Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

Any man may easily do harm, but not every man can do good to another.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

When anyone has the power to destroy the whole human race in a matter of hours, it becomes a moral issue. The church must speak out.

I’ve never been a manipulator, even in my bachelor days. I never wanted to do things to people that could catch up with me later on.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

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

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

You are doomed to make choices. This is life’s greatest paradox.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.

I have known a vast quantity of nonsense talked about bad men not looking you in the face. Don’t trust that conventional idea. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance any day in the week, if there is anything to be got by it.

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

Understand, when you eat meat, that something did die. You have an obligation to value it – not just the sirloin but also all those wonderful tough little bits.

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

I believe it is universally understood and acknowledged that all men will ever act correctly, unless they have a motive to do otherwise.

Little things console us because little things afflict us.

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

Regardless of what society says, we can’t go on much longer in the sea of immorality without judgment coming.

Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by somekind of cosmic lawgiver.

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.

If God dropped acid, would he see people?

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.

Doing well is the result of doing good. That’s what capitalism is all about.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

The law is reason, free from passion.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

Abortion isn’t a lesser evil, it’s a crime. Taking one life to save another, that’s what the Mafia does. It’s a crime. It’s an absolute evil.

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‚within the limits of the law‘ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

He who gives away shall have real gain. He who subdues himself shall be free; he shall cease to be a slave of passions. The righteous man casts off evil, and by rooting out lust, bitterness, and illusion do we reach Nirvana.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.