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

We are time’s subjects, and time bids be gone.

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

I know so many people who feel hopeless, and they ask me, ‚What should I do?‘ And I say: ‚Act. Do something.‘ Because that is the best medicine against sadness and depression.

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

Having nothing, nothing can he lose.

For most of us, wisdom is acquired in the thicket of experience and usually meets us somewhere along the way if we live long enough. But sooner is better than later.

Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.

If we are to go forward, we must go back and rediscover those precious values – that all reality hinges on moral foundations and that all reality has spiritual control.

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

I have visited Japan several times and have always been shown wonderful hospitality.

The statesman’s duty is to bridge the gap between his nation’s experience and his vision.

Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and go in.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

It says nothing against the ripeness of a spirit that it has a few worms.

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.

I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

A man’s character is his guardian divinity.

‚Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.

The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think. No book in the world equals the Bible for that.

The words of truth are always paradoxical.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms – in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

I’ve been doing comedy longer than I haven’t been doing comedy, as I was performing for three years before I even got on ‚The Tonight Show.‘ There’s truly nothing like it; it’s intense and exhilarating, even though it looks so casual.

I love wisdom. And you can never be great at anything unless you love it. Not be in love with it, but love the thing, admire the thing. And it seems that if you love the thing, and you don’t just want to possess it, it will find you.

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.

Step with care and great tact, and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act.

The wise man should restrain his senses like the crane and accomplish his purpose with due knowledge of his place, time and ability.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

Common sense is the genius of humanity.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That’s the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!

If we had more hell in the pulpit, we would have less hell in the pew.

What really raises one’s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

Many a man thinks he is buying pleasure, when he is really selling himself to it.

A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

To suffer the penalty of too much haste, which is too little speed.

When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

Nothing can come of nothing.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

I consider wisdom supernatural because it isn’t taught by men – it’s a gift from God.

The experience of democracy is like the experience of life itself-always changing, infinite in its variety, sometimes turbulent and all the more valuable for having been tested by adversity.

From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.