Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment’s grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one’s life.

I’m an idealist without illusions.

To live is to think.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

Millions of people die every day. Everyone’s got to go sometime. I’ve came by this particular tumor honestly. If you smoke, which I did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption, and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

I still think like a Marxist in many ways.

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.

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

One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

To you I’m an atheist; to God, I’m the Loyal Opposition.

All religions have been made by men.

To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.

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

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

God is not so wary as we, else He would give us no friends, lest we forget Him! The charms of the heaven in the bush are superseded, I fear, by the heaven in the hand, occasionally.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

Purposes, plans, and achievements of men may all disappear like yon cloud upon the mountain’s summit; but, like the mountain itself, the things which are of God shall stand fast for ever and ever.

Reality is a sliding door.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Forgive me my nonsense, as I also forgive the nonsense of those that think they talk sense.

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.

It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one’s life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than ‚try to be a little kinder.‘

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that’s how we’ve got to live.

There are two great forces, God’s force of good and the devil’s force of evil, and I believe Satan is alive and he is working, and he is working harder than ever, and we have many mysteries that we don’t understand.

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.

Man’s greatness lies in his power of thought.

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

No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.

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

Beautiful music is the art of the prophets that can calm the agitations of the soul; it is one of the most magnificent and delightful presents God has given us.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

The Tao teaches us not to intervene and interfere. The things we love we have to learn to leave alone. And the people we love we have to learn to let them be.

God always has patience.

I go to assume a task more difficult than that which devolved upon Washington. Unless the great God, who assisted him, shall be with me and aid me, I must fail; but if the same omniscient mind and almighty arm that directed and protected him shall guide and support me, I shall not fail – I shall succeed.

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

I don’t spend that much time being introspective, believe it or not. All I know is that I grew up not questioning God because that’s how you are. God was there like the birds and the wind.

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

If some people have the belief or view that the Dalai Lama has some miracle power, that’s totally nonsense. I am just one human being.

I would believe only in a God that knows how to Dance.

Great thoughts and a pure heart, that is what we should ask from God.

The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

Knowledge is true opinion.

God is, even though the whole world deny him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

Ordinary morality is innate in my view.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.