Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective.

It’s not tyranny we desire; it’s a just, limited, federal government.

To be is to do.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

Which death is preferably to every other? ‚The unexpected‘.

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms – in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

Being is the great explainer.

Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.

Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that’s what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

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.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

When someone does a small task beautifully, their whole environment is affected by it.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

Kindness in women, not their beauteous looks, shall win my love.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

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

I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.

The beautiful seems right by force of beauty, and the feeble wrong because of weakness.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

Perhaps one of the most difficult things for us to do is to choose a notable and joyous dress for men. There would be more joy in life if we were to accustom ourselves to use all the beautiful colours we can in fashioning our own clothes.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

It seems to me we can never give up longing and wishing while we are thoroughly alive. There are certain things we feel to be beautiful and good, and we must hunger after them.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

Let us have no machine-made ornament at all; it is all bad and worthless and ugly.

When you’re 25 or 30, you know, you can’t wear lime-green eye shadow anymore.

Most sets of values would give rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at that beauty.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

The brain is wider than the sky.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

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

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

Philosophy is the highest music.