Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

But for my faith in God, I should have been a raving maniac.

God always has patience.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

Don’t let anybody make you think God chose America as His divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.

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

Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue with that; I’m right and I will be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now; I don’t know which will go first – rock and roll or Christianity.

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.

Cursing is invoking the assistance of a spirit to help you inflict suffering. Swearing on the other hand, is invoking, only the witness of a spirit to an statement you wish to make.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

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

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

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.

The gods too are fond of a joke.

The most distressing thing that can happen to a prophet is to be proved wrong. The next most distressing thing is to be proved right.

Sorry, I’m still a dialectical materialist.

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.

To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.

It is a common saying, and in everybody’s mouth, that life is but a sojourn.

God cannot be realized through the intellect. Intellect can lead one to a certain extent and no further. It is a matter of faith and experience derived from that faith.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

I do believe in the energy and the productivity of the American business world.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

There’s no one thing that is true. They’re all true.

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

Next to God we are nothing. To God we are Everything.

Our daily deeds as ordinary South Africans must produce an actual South African reality that will reinforce humanity’s belief in justice, strengthen its confidence in the nobility of the human soul, and sustain all our hopes for a glorious life for all.

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.

To do all that one is able to do, is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do, is to be a god.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Clinicians, academicians, and politicians are often put to a test of faith. In pursuit of their goals, will their religion show or will it be hidden? Are they tied back to God or to man?

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

I believe in love at first sight. You want that connection, and then you want some problems.

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

There is nothing permanent except change.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

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

Theology is unnecessary.

I’ve had faith my whole life that there was someone looking out for me, a spirit guide, a soul guide.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.

There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

A belief is purely an individual matter, and you cannot and must not organize it. If you do, it becomes dead, crystallized; it becomes a creed, a sect, a religion, to be imposed on others.

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.

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

It’s amazing how people will give when you don’t ask. Many of them send money because they believe in the message.

The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.

Since God created the world, He also created reality.

That government is best which governs least.

Law is mind without reason.