Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.

The egoism which enters into our theories does not affect their sincerity; rather, the more our egoism is satisfied, the more robust is our belief.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.

The approach of liberty makes even an old man brave.

Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.

I believe in being an innovator.

The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It’s a battle you can’t hope to win – it’s a battle that’s going to go on forever. It’s part of the human condition.

We do not need the empire to give us anything.

I don’t have freedom in the United States to go into a public school and preach the Gospel, nor is a student free in a public school to pray, or a teacher free to read the Bible publicly to the students. At the same time, we have a great degree of freedom for which I am grateful.

I design things to help people to hopefully express their personality.

Men’s actions are too strong for them. Show me a man who has acted, and who has not been the victim and slave of his action.

Art is not a thing; it is a way.

Man’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.

Silence is the mother of truth.

I’m not sure if it’s good to have freedom or not. I’m really confused now.

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

The artist in me cries out for design.

Beto’s copy of the Bill of Rights goes from one to three. Mine includes the Second Amendment. But there are a whole host of people here in Washington… they would be happy to confiscate America’s guns. And if you don’t believe that, then you probably also still believe in Bigfoot.

Nothing cannot exist forever.

That government is best which governs least.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

I know where I’m going and I know the truth, and I don’t have to be what you want me to be. I’m free to be what I want.

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

Through my films I’m eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there, but I’m slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I’m 85, I’ll look back and say, ‚All right, that about sums it up.‘

Death is a release from the impressions of the senses, and from desires that make us their puppets, and from the vagaries of the mind, and from the hard service of the flesh.

I am sorry to think that you do not get a man’s most effective criticism until you provoke him. Severe truth is expressed with some bitterness.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

Too many Christians live their lives like slaves – to the devil – because they believe his lies more than they trust God.

Wherever the invitation of men or your own occasions lead you, speak the very truth, as your life and conscience teach it, and cheer the waiting, fainting hearts of men with new hope and new revelation.

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

And if you’re horrible to me I’m going to write a song about you and you are not going to like it. That’s how I operate.

To me, ideology is corrupt; it’s a parasite on religious structures. To be an ideologue is to have all of the terrible things that are associated with religious certainty and none of the utility. If you’re an ideologue, you believe everything that you think. If you’re religious, there’s a mystery left there.

If men were born free, they would, so long as they remained free, form no conception of good and evil.

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.

What’s the good of drawing in the next breath if all you do is let it out and draw in another?

Silence is safer than speech.

I have all the emotions that everyone has; it just appears that I don’t.

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.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.

Our inquiring friends and neighbors not of our faith can also catch the wave. We encourage them to keep all that is good and true in their lives. And we invite them to receive more, especially the glorious truth that through God’s eternal plan, families can be together forever.

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.

Surely our job while we’re here on Earth is to learn about the world, not to create parallel universes.

Language is an intrinsic part of who we are and what has, for good or evil, happened to us.

By a lie, a man… annihilates his dignity as a man.

Irrespective of age, we mourn for those loved and lost. Mourning is one of the deepest expressions of pure love.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.

The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty. Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty.

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.