Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

What difference does it make how much you have? What you do not have amounts to much more.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

Political language… is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose.

For though we love both the truth and our friends, piety requires us to honor the truth first.

Hatreds not vowed and concealed are to be feared more than those openly declared.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

One likes people much better when they’re battered down by a prodigious siege of misfortune than when they triumph.

I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

Eight years involved with the nuclear industry have taught me that when nothing can possible go wrong and every avenue has been covered, then is the time to buy a house on the next continent.

The bookful blockhead, ignorantly read, With loads of learned lumber in his head.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both.

A friend who is far away is sometimes much nearer than one who is at hand. Is not the mountain far more awe-inspiring and more clearly visible to one passing through the valley than to those who inhabit the mountain?

I’m convinced that no one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

I don’t concern myself with award. I’d been to the party enough times to know it really didn’t matter.

Hillary doesn’t play. She has more experience and exposure to the presidency than any candidate in our lifetime – yes, more than Barack, more than Bill. So she is absolutely ready to be Commander-in-Chief on day one. And, yes, she happens to be a woman.

I love that I can tell the truth and have people laugh at it.

I’m a career prosecutor. I have been trained, and my experience over decades, is to make decisions after a review of the evidence and the facts. And not to jump up with grand gestures before I’ve done that. Some might interpret that as being cautious. I would tell you that’s just responsible.

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.

There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is limitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

I’d rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

Getting older is no problem. You just have to live long enough.

Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom – and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.

The drama and the trauma of the relationship you have when you’re 16 can mirror the one you have when you’re 26. Life repeats itself.

To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.

Where a man can live, he can also live well.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

Genius always gives its best at first; prudence, at last.

Necessity dispenseth with decorum.

It takes two to speak the truth: one to speak, and another to hear.

The wise use of your freedom to make your own decisions is crucial to your spiritual growth, now and for eternity.

I am not young enough to know everything.

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

No excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

Two things control men’s nature, instinct and experience.

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

I don’t think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

Here is the rule to remember in the future, When anything tempts you to be bitter: not, ‚This is a misfortune‘ but ‚To bear this worthily is good fortune.‘

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.

The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.