He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

‚Pure experience‘ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

People seem not to see that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

The world itself is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power – and nothing else!

Every wall is a door.

Pessimism leads to weakness, optimism to power.

Saints can be happy under every circumstance.

If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it’s not.

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

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

People think, because we’re young, we aren’t complex, but that’s not true. We deal with life and love and broken hearts in the same way a woman a few years older might.

So long as a man imagines that he cannot do this or that, so long as he is determined not to do it; and consequently so long as it is impossible to him that he should do it.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.

A man’s felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.

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

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

A person hears only what they understand.

Hell is other people.

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.

They’re right to think that about me, because I’m the person most likely to sleep with my female fans, I genuinely love other women. And I think they know that.

I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.

Mind your speech a little lest you should mar your fortunes.

A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

He who lives in our mind is near though he may actually be far away; but he who is not in our heart is far though he may really be nearby.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else, and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you… Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

Reality simply consists of different points of view.

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

I have spent many years of my life in opposition, and I rather like the role.

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

If everything isn’t black and white, I say, ‚Why the hell not?‘

By the sole fact of his entering into ‚Thought,‘ man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion.

You might not have the things you want, but if you check carefully, you got all you need.

I think whether you’re having setbacks or not, the role of a leader is to always display a winning attitude.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

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

Things do not change; we change.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.

If investments in banks fall, it is a tragedy, and people say, ‚What are we going to do?‘ but if people die of hunger, have nothing to eat or suffer from poor health, that’s nothing.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great.

I think there is a lot made out of age, and what age you feel.

I will never be an old man. To me, old age is always 15 years older than I am.

Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.