Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.

Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.

Our friends at the Republican convention were more than happy to talk about everything they think is wrong with America, but they didn’t have much to say about how they’d make it right. They want your vote, but they don’t want you to know their plan.

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

Our life is made by the death of others.

Every writer has his writing technique – what he can and can’t do to describe something like war or history. I’m not good at writing about those things, but I try because I feel it is necessary to write that kind of thing.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

Nothing can be divided into more parts than it can possibly be constituted of. But matter (i.e. finite) cannot be constituted of infinite parts.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

I want to go down in the history books with what I’ve achieved.

Life is hard. After all, it kills you.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.

I don’t know who invented high heels, but all women owe him a lot.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

If we don’t know life, how can we know death?

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

I want to do a certain thing in the world, and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.

Europe is so well gardened that it resembles a work of art, a scientific theory, a neat metaphysical system. Man has re-created Europe in his own image.

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.

We must accept what science tells us, that man was born from the earth. But, more logical than the scientists who lecture us, we must carry this lesson to its conclusion: that is to say, accept that man was born entirely from the world – not only his flesh and bones but his incredible power of thought.

Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.

Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.

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.

What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.

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.

Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning.

No people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it.

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

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

Historically, the family has played the primary role in educating children for life, with the school providing supplemental scaffolding to the family.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.

I went to the museum where they had all the heads and arms from the statues that are in all the other museums.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one’s temper and disturb one’s quiet.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

Ever since the morning of May 29, 1953, when Tenzing Norgay and I became the first climbers to step onto the summit of Mount Everest, I’ve been called a great adventurer.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

What goes up must come down.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

The Chinese government wants me to say that for many centuries Tibet has been part of China. Even if I make that statement, many people would just laugh. And my statement will not change past history. History is history.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.