He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

History should be written as philosophy.

It is as necessary for man to live in beauty rather than ugliness as it is necessary for him to have food for an aching belly or rest for a weary body.

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

I think everyone should be with who they love.

I have seen how leaders rule by intimidation. Leaders who demonize and dehumanize entire groups of people often do so because they have nothing else to offer. And I have seen how places that stifle the voices and dismiss the potential of their citizens are diminished: how they are less vital, less hopeful, less free.

I think we must get rid of slavery, or we must get rid of freedom.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

Without freedom, no art; art lives only on the restraints it imposes on itself, and dies of all others.

We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from… Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

Little things console us because little things afflict us.

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

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

I will not leave South Africa, nor will I surrender. Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action can freedom be won. The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days.

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

Rebellion is what you make of it. When you’ve been on a tour bus for two months straight, and then you get in your car and drive wherever you want, that can feel rebellious.

Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life… Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are. The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

The intense happiness of our union is derived in a high degree from the perfect freedom with which we each follow and declare our own impressions.

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 still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have lost the power of reason.

The words of truth are always paradoxical.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

I don’t live by all these rigid, weird rules that make me feel all fenced in. I just like the way that I feel like, and that makes me feel very free.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

Every parting gives a foretaste of death, every reunion a hint of the resurrection.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

Who can exhaust a man? Who knows a man’s resources?

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.

I mean, I never liked being told what to do. It’s one of the reasons I dropped out of school.

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

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

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

There is a fundamental question we all have to face. How are we to live our lives; by what principles and moral values will we be guided and inspired?

Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.

The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

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.

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

Is freedom anything else than the right to live as we wish? Nothing else.

All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.