Assuming if there’s such a thing as reality, if you have a false relationship with it, how can you do anything but fail?

It is natural to die as to be born.

A man’s felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.

I like not only to be loved, but also to be told I am loved.

The Vietnam War required us to emphasize the national interest rather than abstract principles. What President Nixon and I tried to do was unnatural. And that is why we didn’t make it.

Our life is made by the death of others.

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

The truth is lived, not taught.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

No man ever achieved worth-while success who did not, at one time or other, find himself with at least one foot hanging well over the brink of failure.

The eyes are more exact witnesses than the ears.

It is impossible to reason without arriving at a Supreme Being.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks he becomes.

He who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.

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.

Plant and your spouse plants with you; weed and you weed alone.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

The way up and the way down are one and the same.

I make friends faster and easier than journalists.

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

Remember that creating a successful marriage is like farming: you have to start over again every morning.

Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

Love is not altogether a delirium, yet it has many points in common therewith.

Behind every successful man is a woman, behind her is his wife.

I’m not really concerned with portraying this tough warrior – I mean, that’s part of my job and I take that very seriously. But I don’t have anything to hide, and I’m not concerned with what people think.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Whatever you believe with feeling becomes your reality.

One of the things I definitely think of as a driver of me is fear. And it’s fear of failure, fear of being overtaken.

Marriage is this grand madness, and I think if people knew that, they would perhaps take it more seriously.

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

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

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

We must accept what science tells us, that man was born from the earth. But, more logical than the scientists who lecture us, we must carry this lesson to its conclusion: that is to say, accept that man was born entirely from the world – not only his flesh and bones but his incredible power of thought.

How can one preach goodness and love to men without at the same time offering them an interpretation of the World that justifies this goodness and this love?

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

Love is only one of many passions.

Theology is unnecessary.

Too many of us look upon Americans as dollar chasers. This is a cruel libel, even if it is reiterated thoughtlessly by the Americans themselves.

An intelligent man is sometimes forced to be drunk to spend time with his fools.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

Marriage is good enough for the lower classes: they have facilities for desertion that are denied to us.

We must find our duties in what comes to us, not in what might have been.

You can’t blame gravity for falling in love.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

One of the most terrible feelings in the world is knowing that someone else doesn’t like you. Especially when you don’t know what you’ve done to deserve it.

Love and doubt have never been on speaking terms.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

No man was ever wise by chance.

I bought a company in the mid-’90s called Dexter Shoe and paid $400 million for it. And it went to zero. And I gave about $400 million worth of Berkshire stock, which is probably now worth $400 billion. But I’ve made lots of dumb decisions. That’s part of the game.