Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.

Truth is a pathless land.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

In spite of his practical ability, some of his experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.

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.

No one can outrun death. It will catch up to all of us eventually.

That government is best which governs least.

In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.

Perhaps nature is our best assurance of immortality.

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

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

After all manner of professors have done their best for us, the place we are to get knowledge is in books. The true university of these days is a collection of books.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

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

Never pray for justice, because you might get some.

I am quite serious when I say that I do not believe there are, on the whole earth besides, so many intensified bores as in these United States. No man can form an adequate idea of the real meaning of the word, without coming here.

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

The American doctor, in my opinion, possesses a combination of conservatism and that other quality which has put the United States in the forefront in almost every department of science – that is, an eagerness to know what it is really all about in order that he may not be the one left behind if there is something to it.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

Collecting facts is important. Knowledge is important. But if you don’t have an imagination to use the knowledge, civilization is nowhere.

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

In those days he was wiser than he is now; he used to frequently take my advice.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

If we are to take for the criterion of truth the majority of suffrages, they ought to be gotten from those philosophic and patriotic citizens who cultivate their reason.

In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.

If you wish to succeed in life, make perseverance your bosom friend, experience your wise counselor, caution your elder brother, and hope your guardian genius.

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

I’m sure a lot of people out there make mistakes.

Success is the result of perfection, hard work, learning from failure, loyalty, and persistence.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

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

If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.

Superstition is to religion what astrology is to astronomy the mad daughter of a wise mother. These daughters have too long dominated the earth.

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet.

I have wondered about time all my life.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

Why has government been instituted at all? Because the passions of men will not conform to the dictates of reason and justice, without constraint.

Forty to 60 I would say is your prime. That’s when you know the most, you’ve seen the most, you understand the most, and you still have some physical energy.

Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.

As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

All that mankind has done, thought or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books.

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

I try to use my experience and the fact that I grew up in the ghetto – I tell people you don’t have to rob or steal to get out of the ghetto.