There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.
Samuel JohnsonThe first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.
VoltaireAs we grow old, the beauty steals inward.
Ralph Waldo EmersonOrdinary morality is innate in my view.
Christopher HitchensThere is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.
William ShakespeareI don’t pretend we have all the answers. But the questions are certainly worth thinking about.
Arthur C. ClarkeGreat bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.
Virginia WoolfBeautiful sentences pop into my head. Beautiful sentences that aren’t always absolutely accurate. Then, I have to choose between the beautiful sentence and being absolutely accurate. It can be a difficult choice.
Christopher HitchensIt is natural to die as to be born.
Francis BaconIt disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.
Jean-Paul SartreI sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.
Oscar WildeExperience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.
Immanuel KantMy philosophy is, it’s always very rewarding when you can make an audience laugh. I don’t mind making fun of myself. I like self-deprecating comedy. But I’d like you to laugh with me occasionally, too.
Dwayne JohnsonIt may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful?
Mahatma GandhiYou could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.
HeraclitusPeace is liberty in tranquillity.
Marcus Tullius CiceroNone are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheOne may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.
Gilbert K. ChestertonA truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.
Bertrand RussellLife and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.
Lao TzuI believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.
Neil ArmstrongWhat the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.
Alan WattsIt 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.
George EliotThe impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.
Douglas AdamsI put cocoa butter all over my face and my iconic belly and my arms and legs. Why live rough? Live smooth.
DJ KhaledAh, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.
Albert CamusThe most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.
Thomas SowellReality is a sliding door.
Ralph Waldo EmersonKnow then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.
Alexander PopeThe earth laughs in flowers.
Ralph Waldo EmersonYesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.
Hunter S. ThompsonEverything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.
Paul AusterMen would be angels, angels would be gods.
Alexander PopeExperience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.
Edgar Allan PoeWe choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.
Khalil GibranThe pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.
Carl JungIf you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that He exists.
Blaise PascalIt is easier to feel than to realize, or in any way explain, Yosemite grandeur. The magnitudes of the rocks and trees and streams are so delicately harmonized, they are mostly hidden.
John MuirThere is no such thing as Something for nothing.
Napoleon HillBefore the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.
Friedrich NietzscheWe are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.
Ralph Waldo EmersonWhether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.
AristotleEvery tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.
Elbert HubbardThere is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.
Dalai LamaInterdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.
Mahatma GandhiThose whom the gods love grow young.
Oscar WildeSkepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.
Napoleon BonaparteBut we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.
Alan WattsHonor thy error as a hidden intention.
Brian EnoIt is not death or pain that is to be dreaded, but the fear of pain or death.
EpictetusAs far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.
Albert EinsteinEverybody’s got that split between the beautiful and fragile, the hard and the dark.
AuroraNature does nothing in vain.
AristotleWisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.
Ralph Waldo EmersonHe who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.
VoltaireTruth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.
PlatoA 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.
Aldous HuxleyTo live is to think.
Marcus Tullius CiceroStates are not moral agents.
Noam ChomskyWe do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.
Richard M. Nixon