Being is the great explainer.

Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

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?

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

No obligation to do the impossible is binding.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Life is a series of commas, not periods.

The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life… Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality.

By the sole fact of his entering into ‚Thought,‘ man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, – till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself. The Way of Heaven does one good but never does one harm. The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

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

In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself – limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

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.

Modern science says: ‚The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.‘ From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

Life is our dictionary.

A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

Plato is my friend; Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.

Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

I do not think psychoanalysis has a scientific basis. If we can’t explain why a cockroach decides to turn left, how can we explain why a human being decides to do something?

I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.