Anyone can be a moral individual, concerned with human rights and problems; but only a college professor, a trained expert, can solve technical problems by ‚sophisticated‘ methods. Ergo, it is only problems of the latter sort that are important or real.

Everything’s fine today, that is our illusion.

Amour is the one human activity of any importance in which laughter and pleasure preponderate, if ever so slightly, over misery and pain.

Progress is not an illusion, it happens, but it is slow and invariably disappointing.

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

The quality, not the longevity, of one’s life is what is important.

In a lot of ways, success is much harder than I thought it would be. I figured that you’d get here and then everything would be happily ever after. But, it’s hard work, almost harder once you’re successful because you’ve got to maintain it.

We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

Why shouldn’t truth be stranger than fiction? Fiction, after all, has to make sense.

Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.

Facts are stubborn things.

I think what you’re seeing is a profound recognition on the part of the American people that gays and lesbians and transgender persons are our brothers, our sisters, our children, our cousins, our friends, our co-workers, and that they’ve got to be treated like every other American. And I think that principle will win out.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

Our intention creates our reality.

The philosophical question before us is, when we make an observation of our track in the past, does the result of our observation become real in the same sense that the final state would be defined if an outside observer were to make the observation?

Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.

In my opinion, there is no aspect of reality beyond the reach of the human mind.

Appearance is something absolute, but reality is not that way – everything is interdependent, not absolute. So that view is very helpful to maintain a peace of mind because the main destroyer of a peaceful mind is anger.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

To me, comedy is just twisting reality. It’s commenting or observing or twisting life.

Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

Perception often lags behind reality, and I can say from experience that the vast majority of public officials in Louisiana are much better than our reputation holds us to be.

I think that slavery is wrong, morally, socially and politically. I desire that it should be no further spread in these United States, and I should not object if it should gradually terminate in the whole Union.

Love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters?

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.

The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.

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

There is never vulgarity in a whole truth, however commonplace. It may be unimportant or painful. It cannot be vulgar. Vulgarity is only in concealment of truth, or in affectation.

I’m not for gay marriage, but I’m not for discriminating against people.

Man, all lives matter.

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

The writing is important, but the way you say the line and the pause you give it, the facial expression – all of that is very important.

Peace and justice are two sides of the same coin.

I think the family movie is very important to everybody right now.

Freedom is something that dies unless it’s used.

Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

The world is seldom what it seems; to man, who dimly sees, realities appear as dreams, and dreams realities.

Christ managed to boil down an awful lot of commandments to a few very simple rules for living. It’s when you go backwards through the ‚begats‘ and the Garden of Eden, and you start thinking, ‚Hang on, that’s a big punishment for eating one lousy apple… There’s a human-rights issue.‘

The equal right of all citizens to health, education, work, food, security, culture, science, and wellbeing – that is, the same rights we proclaimed when we began our struggle, in addition to those which emerge from our dreams of justice and equality for all inhabitants of our world – is what I wish for all.

Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.

Nineteen sixty-eight was one exciting moment in a much larger movement. It spawned a whole range of movements. There wouldn’t have been an international global solidarity movement, for instance, without the events of 1968. It was enormous, in terms of human rights, ethnic rights, a concern for the environment, too.

Oh my God – this is scary and sad all at the same time. I literally dream about buying my own groceries. Swear to God. Because it is something that is real and normal.

I hope that a move toward clemency with Judge Afiuni would be a step towards the importance of maintaining a properly functioning justice system.

It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

A reader can never tell if it’s a real thimble or an imaginary thimble, because by the time you’re reading it, they’re the same. It’s a thimble. It’s in the book.

A creation of importance can only be produced when its author isolates himself, it is a child of solitude.

The blurring of fantasy and reality is something that the Japanese herald in their life, in their day-to-day commercialism.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.

It is the quality of the moment, not the number of days, or events, or of actors, that imports.

Human rights are not only violated by terrorism, repression or assassination, but also by unfair economic structures that creates huge inequalities.

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself.

Enthusiasm is the most important thing in life.

If you think dealing with issues like worthiness and authenticity and vulnerability are not worthwhile because there are more pressing issues, like the bottom line or attendance or standardized test scores, you are sadly, sadly mistaken. It underpins everything.

I lived in a dictatorship in Brazil, and I was arrested three times. I felt in my flesh what it is to live under such a regime and experience deprivation of freedom.

I feel like the thing we can do is celebrate people doing great work and create more cultural momentum and awareness that this is an important thing in the world. So when the next economic crisis hits and people are talking about where to cut from the budget, science isn’t the thing.

‚Nation‘ was one that I’d have killed myself if I hadn’t written it. It was absolutely important to me that I wrote it. It was good for my soul.