He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.

All things in the world come from being. And being comes from non-being.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

Don’t let anybody make you think God chose America as His divine messianic force to be a sort of policeman of the whole world.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

God to me is love.

Who has fully realized that history is not contained in thick books but lives in our very blood?

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

To be is to do.

I am a Christian. That obliges me to be a Communist.

At the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. On the cranky left, that is very annoying; I can see that.

Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

My religion is very simple. My religion is kindness.

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.

To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father.

All art really does is keep you focused on questions of humanity, and it really is about how do we get on with our maker.

Science has explained nothing; the more we know the more fantastic the world becomes and the profounder the surrounding darkness.

The true artist is not proud: he unfortunately sees that art has no limits; he feels darkly how far he is from the goal, and though he may be admired by others, he is sad not to have reached that point to which his better genius only appears as a distant, guiding sun.

One of the most important concepts of revealed religion is that of a sacred covenant.

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

To do nothing is also a good remedy.

Libraries raised me.

I believe that Catholics involved in politics carry the values of their religion within them, but have the mature awareness and expertise to implement them. The Church will never go beyond its task of expressing and disseminating its values, at least as long as I’m here.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term Art, I should call it ‚the reproduction of what the Senses perceive in Nature through the veil of the soul.‘ The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in Nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of ‚Artist.‘

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy.

It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt.

Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

Certain though I am – and ever more certain – that I must press on in life as though Christ awaited me at the term of the universe, at the same time I feel no special assurance of the existence of Christ. Believing is not seeing. As much as anyone, I imagine, I walk in the shadows of faith.

God’s love is too great to be confined to any one side of a conflict or to any one religion.

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

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

Don’t say I hate institutionalised religion – rather than saying I hate those things, which I do not, what I’m saying is that perhaps there is a way of opening more doors, rather than closing so many.

There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds.

When you become a Christian, something truly amazing happens: God comes to live inside your heart. You become the home of God.

There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

It is not well to make great changes in old age.

The stories are not autobiographical, but they’re personal in that way. I seem to know only the things that I’ve learned. Probably some things through observation, but what I feel I know surely is personal.

It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.

Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I’m trying to say is I’m trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.

An empowered organisation is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organisational success.

I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say definitely what is and what is not possible.

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

I had no talent for science. What was infinitely worse: all my fraternity brothers were engineers.

Before we acquire great power we must acquire wisdom to use it well.

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.