All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.

Being is the great explainer.

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

A useless life is an early death.

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

Every man is his own hell.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

It’s the philosophies of being an athlete that carry me today.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness… and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

The world is round so that friendship may encircle it.

A president can ask for reconciliation in the racial conflict that divides Americans. But reconciliation comes only from the hearts of people.

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

Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.

I think there’s just one kind of folks. Folks.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

You can’t choose up sides on a round world.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.

Right now, when we’re hearing so much disturbing and hateful rhetoric, it is so important to remember that our diversity has been – and will always be – our greatest source of strength and pride here in the United States.

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

There is no love of life without despair of life.

My philosophy is simple: It’s a down-home, common, horse-sense approach to things.

There is no birth of consciousness without pain.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Here in America, we don’t give in to our fears. We don’t build up walls to keep people out.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

At the heart of every being lies creation’s dream of a principle that will one day give organic form to its fragmented treasures. God is unity.

The truth is, no one of us can be free until everybody is free.

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.

Wisdom is nothing but a preparation of the soul, a capacity, a secret art of thinking, feeling and breathing thoughts of unity at every moment of life.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

We should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time’s carcass.

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

I think the materialist conception of history is valid.

A jug fills drop by drop.

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

Let’s be very clear: Strong men – men who are truly role models – don’t need to put down women to make themselves feel powerful. People who are truly strong lift others up. People who are truly powerful bring others together.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.