Being is the great explainer.

States are not moral agents.

The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for white, or women created for men.

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.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

Science is but an image of the truth.

Man’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.

The things I talk about and explain couldn’t happen – yet, they don’t seem impossible – you could say I talk about the world in an abstract perspective. But then, the world is basically insane – and it’s trying to pass itself off as being a sane place. I show it for what it is.

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

The way is long if one follows precepts, but short… if one follows patterns.

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.

Man – a being in search of meaning.

From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

I do think there must be some kind of interaction between your living life and the life that goes on from here.

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

He that does good to another does good also to himself.

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

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

To the dumb question, ‚Why me?‘ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‚Why not?‘

I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.

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

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

Fear is the mother of morality.

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.

It’s really easy to have a nice philosophy about openness, but moving the world in that direction is a different thing. It requires both understanding where you want to go and being pragmatic about getting there.