All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.

I don’t see myself as a philosopher. That’s awfully boring.

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

One advantage in keeping a diary is that you become aware with reassuring clarity of the changes which you constantly suffer.

You know, God has some really weird kids, and I find it hard to be in their company most of the time.

A man who has no office to go, to I don’t care who he is, is a trial of which you can have no conception.

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot? The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

I think it makes sense to believe in God, but exactly what decision in your life you make differently because of it, I don’t know.

I can’t imagine what it is like to be raised in a society where their only statues that exist are to you and your father.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

The word ‚God‘ usually signifies ‚Lord‘, but every lord is not a God. It is the dominion of a spiritual being which constitutes a God: a true, supreme, or imaginary dominion makes a true, supreme, or imaginary God.

To me, the black black woman is our essential mother, the blacker she is the more us she is and to see the hatred that is turned on her is enough to make me despair, almost entirely, of our future as a people.

Work alone is noble.

A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges is not Christian. This is not in the Gospel.

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

I give the name of cosmic sense to the more or less confused affinity that binds us psychologically to the All which envelops us. The existence of this feeling is indubitable, and apparently as old as the beginning of thought… The cosmic sense must have been born as soon as man found himself facing the forest, the sea and the stars.

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

I am a little too absorbed by science to be able to philosophise much; but the more I look into myself, the more I find myself possessed by the conviction that it is only the science of Christ running through all things, that is to say true mystical science, that really matters. I let myself get caught up in the game when I geologise.

After it is all over, the religion of man is his most important possession.

Our fatigue is often caused not by work, but by worry, frustration and resentment.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

Sometimes it seems as if there are more solutions than problems. On closer scrutiny, it turns out that many of today’s problems are a result of yesterday’s solutions.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

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.

The atom bombs are piling up in the factories, the police are prowling through the cities, the lies are streaming from the loudspeakers, but the earth is still going round the sun.

Time stays, we go.

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

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

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

I think we’ve taken the meaning of Christmas out. People don’t stop and think about Jesus or the birth of Jesus. When they think of Christmas, they think of Santa Claus and – for the children, and they think of giving gifts and out-giving the next person of spending their time looking for the right thing for somebody who has everything.

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.

The fault lines are shifting from the boundaries of nations into the web of our societies and the streets of our cities. And, terrorism and extremism are a global force that are larger than their changing names, groups, territories and targets.

I need one of those baby monitors from my subconscious to my consciousness so I can know what the hell I’m really thinking about.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

The concept of loneliness and exile and self-sufficiency continually bucks me up.

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

Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.

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

Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

My husband is everything to me and without him it’s just not the same.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

Religious bondage shackles and debilitates the mind and unfits it for every noble enterprise, every expanded prospect.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

It is as necessary for man to live in beauty rather than ugliness as it is necessary for him to have food for an aching belly or rest for a weary body.

There’s a deceptive sin that can keep us from walking in love: pride. It’s deceptive because when you have pride, you’re usually too proud to admit it. I know this because I used to have teachings on pride and they didn’t sell well.

We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free; but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.

To do a great right do a little wrong.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between.