But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.

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.

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

Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.

Before 1915, space and time were thought of as a fixed arena in which events took place, but which was not affected by what happened in it. Space and time are now dynamic quantities… space and time not only affect but are also affected by everything that happens in the universe.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

The momentous thing in human life is the art of winning the soul to good or evil.

I don’t see myself as a philosopher. That’s awfully boring.

For me, my secularism is, India first. I say, the philosophy of my party is ‚Justice to all. Appeasement to none.‘ This is our secularism.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

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.

I still think like a Marxist in many ways.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes‘ palaces.

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.

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

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.

Only those are fit to live who are not afraid to die.

Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures.

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

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.

Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.

Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on; it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.

I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

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

The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew.

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

The book, ’12 Rules For Life,‘ is a very serious book. There’s elements of humor in it, but I’m trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it’s necessary to live a upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there’s hell to pay if you don’t do that.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

There are three constants in life… change, choice and principles.

The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it.

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.

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

You are doomed to make choices. This is life’s greatest paradox.

Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten. Don’t let yourself be lulled into inaction.

Time itself comes in drops.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.

Words are loaded pistols.

We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

It’s a philosophy of life. A practice. If you do this, something will change, what will change is that you will change, your life will change, and if you can change you, you can perhaps change the world.

Life is our dictionary.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

Don’t gain the world and lose your soul; wisdom is better than silver or gold.

Until 1914 I loved to travel; I often went to Italy and once spent a few months in India. Since then I have almost entirely abandoned travelling, and I have not been outside of Switzerland for over ten years.

Your own soul is nourished when you are kind; it is destroyed when you are cruel.