From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.

I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one’s memories.

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.

Men are not prisoners of fate, but only prisoners of their own minds.

You always want to quit while you are ahead. You don’t want to be like a fighter who stays too long in the ring until you’re not performing at your best.

A man’s character is his guardian divinity.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.

Somewhere deep down there’s a decent man in me, he just can’t be found.

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

I’m never going to be fast, and nobody will ever mistake me for being fast.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

That nice, soft pillow and the warm blanket, and it’s all comfortable, and no one wants to leave that comfort – but if you can wake up early in the morning, get a head start on everyone else that’s still sleeping, get productive time doing things that you need to do – that’s a huge piece to moving your life forward.

I don’t tell people, ‚You’re okay the way that you are.‘ That’s not the right story. The right story is, ‚You’re way less than you could be.‘

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

Become aware of your own insufficiency.

I had never been in charge of anything. I’d always worked for someone. I worked for a furniture warehouse. I did masonry. I always had a boss yelling at me. So I’d never been in charge of an organization.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

The human body has two ends on it: one to create with and one to sit on. Sometimes people get their ends reversed. When this happens they need a kick in the seat of the pants.

Make bold choices and make mistakes. It’s all those things that add up to the person you become.

It is better to be alone than in bad company.

The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

Custom reconciles us to everything.

To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

Strength and compassion are not mutually exclusive.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza’s God, it won’t love us in return.

We all have a tendency to avoid our weaknesses. When we do that, we never progress or get any better.

Forty is when you actually begin even deserving to be on stage telling people what you think.

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

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

It’s more interesting for me to figure out how to be superior in areas where I’m naive, where I’m a novice.

Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem.

I tried acting, liked it, and stuck with it. I saw it as the way I would keep that promise to myself of getting back at those who had made my school life a misery.

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

We should seek the greatest value of our action.

I’ve always believed that you can think positive just as well as you can think negative.

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.

If a man neglects education, he walks lame to the end of his life.

Do not overrate what you have received, nor envy others. He who envies others does not obtain peace of mind.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

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.

Existence precedes and rules essence.

I have goals.

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.

We learn martial arts as helping weakness. You never fight for people to get hurt. You’re always helping people.

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.

If it’s going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

Forgiveness is not a feeling – it’s a decision we make because we want to do what’s right before God. It’s a quality decision that won’t be easy and it may take time to get through the process, depending on the severity of the offense.

He ate and drank the precious Words, his Spirit grew robust; He knew no more that he was poor, nor that his frame was Dust.

But what we can do, as flawed as we are, is still see God in other people, and do our best to help them find their own grace. That’s what I strive to do, that’s what I pray to do every day.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.