Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

I want to represent… to the kids to draw strength from me. So they can see that everybody goes through something, but you can rise up and do your best. Just try.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you’d never complete your life, would you? You’d never wholly know you.

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever – this is a somewhat new kind of religion.

If you would take, you must first give, this is the beginning of intelligence.

Things in themselves have no life in them. A car can’t comfort or encourage you. A house means nothing if there’s no life and love inside.

I know love is the answer.

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.

To live is to think.

The truth is I love being alive. And I love feeling free. So if I can’t have those things then I feel like a caged animal and I’d rather not be in a cage. I’d rather be dead. And it’s real simple. And I think it’s not that uncommon.

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

He who obtains has little. He who scatters has much.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.

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.

The real truths of life are never entirely new to you or to anybody because there is a level deep down within you where you already know all the things, all those spiritual truths that you read or hear, and then recognize them. I say ‚recognize‘ because you’re not… it’s not new.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

In words, as fashions, the same rule will hold; Alike fantastic, if too new, or old: Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside.

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.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

There may not be one Truth – there may be several truths – but saying that is not to say that reality doesn’t exist.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

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

Over the years I’ve seen people lose a spouse and then withdraw and lose interest in life, and I believe we need to resist that.

What would life be if we had no courage to attempt anything?

Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance, you must keep moving.

As a man sow, shall he reap. and I know that talk is cheap. But the heat of the battle is as sweet as the victory.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

One whose knowledge is confined to books and whose wealth is in the possession of others, can use neither his knowledge nor wealth when the need for them arises.

Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.

Some minds remain open long enough for the truth not only to enter but to pass on through by way of a ready exit without pausing anywhere along the route.

Life in general has never been even close to fair, so the pretense that the government can make it fair is a valuable and inexhaustible asset to politicians who want to expand government.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

From the dust of the earth, from the common elementary fund, the Creator has made Homo sapiens. From the same material he has made every other creature, however noxious and insignificant to us. They are earth-born companions and our fellow mortals.

Nobody, as long as he moves about among the chaotic currents of life, is without trouble.

You just have to have a simple faith.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

A useless life is an early death.

How do you know what it’s like to be stupid if you’ve never been smart?

The greatest use of a life is to spend it on something that will outlast it.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

I don’t think that you can be prescriptive about anything, I mean, life is too complicated. Maybe there are novels where the author has not in the least thought about it in terms of film, which can be turned into good films.

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

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.

Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair; the rest is in the hands of God.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

Fear is the mother of morality.