Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

There must be a reason why some people can afford to live well. They must have worked for it. I only feel angry when I see waste. When I see people throwing away things that we could use.

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step.

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

People tend to play in their comfort zone, so the best things are achieved in a state of surprise, actually.

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.

Richard Burton came from the same town as me, so I thought I’d follow my nose, and follow my luck. I think I’ve been very lucky.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

Justice means minding one’s own business and not meddling with other men’s concerns.

If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.

It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.

The lie is a condition of life.

Love many things, for therein lies the true strength, and whosoever loves much performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.

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.

Richard Nixon was an evil man – evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency.

Successful people make money. It’s not that people who make money become successful, but that successful people attract money. They bring success to what they do.

When people protest and are upset with a movie, it becomes a big hit. They hated Passion of The Christ, it worked out pretty well for the box office. So let’s get that going.

Effective action is always unjust.

You’ve got to reach a hand of friendship across the aisle and across philosophies in this country.

We’re going to have to work. We’re going to have to play well. Nothing will be given to us.

Most dangerous is that temptation that doth goad us on to sin in loving virtue.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified.

There is a real danger that computers will develop intelligence and take over. We urgently need to develop direct connections to the brain so that computers can add to human intelligence rather than be in opposition.

What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

Getting rich is about fun. It’s a game, and you have to treat it that way.

At the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. On the cranky left, that is very annoying; I can see that.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

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

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

Talent without working hard is nothing.

Gratitude is a duty which ought to be paid, but which none have a right to expect.

If you want to achieve something, you build the basis for it.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.

Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

As a kid from Compton, you can get all the success in the world and still question your worth.

Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all, in which case you have failed by default.

Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare – something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state – something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.

Fame can take interesting men and thrust mediocrity upon them.

Sometimes I’m fascinated with how famous my work could be while I’m not so famous.