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

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

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

In my opinion, there is no aspect of reality beyond the reach of the human mind.

It is hard to contend against one’s heart’s desire; for whatever it wishes to have it buys at the cost of soul.

Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

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?

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

Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe.

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.

I am against nature. I don’t dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can’t touch with decay.

Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that’s all. So we direct our values to material things.

To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.

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.

My religion encompasses all religions. I believe in God, I believe in the universe. I believe you are god, I believe I am god; I believe the earth is god and the universe is god. We’re all god.

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.

First of all, you ask me if the God of Christians forgives one who doesn’t believe and doesn’t seek the faith. Premise that – and it’s the fundamental thing – the mercy of God has no limits if one turns to him with a sincere and contrite heart; the question for one who doesn’t believe in God lies in obeying one’s conscience.

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

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

A jug fills drop by drop.

Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God.

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

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

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

It’s not the tools that you have faith in – tools are just tools. They work, or they don’t work. It’s people you have faith in or not. Yeah, sure, I’m still optimistic I mean, I get pessimistic sometimes but not for long.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

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

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

There is no birth of consciousness without pain.

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

Americans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts, patriotism, idealism, a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know. I believe that.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

I do not believe any of the statistical claims that are made about public opinion. I don’t see why anybody does.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

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

He who has faith has… an inward reservoir of courage, hope, confidence, calmness, and assuring trust that all will come out well – even though to the world it may appear to come out most badly.

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one’s being added to that being.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

Worshipping the Lord means giving Him the place that he must have; worshipping the Lord means stating, believing – not only by our words – that He alone truly guides our lives; worshipping the Lord means that we are convinced before Him that He is the only God, the God of our lives, the God of our history.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‚the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.‘ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‚Artist.‘

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

I know what I believe, I know what I want to do, and I’m just comfortable saying it, and laying it out there.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

And yet it moves.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the soul.

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

I never really had the classic struggle. I had faith.