How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

A man is truly ethical only when he obeys the compulsion to help all life which he is able to assist, and shrinks from injuring anything that lives.

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.

Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having.

The time has come for all evangelists to practice full financial disclosure. The world is watching how we walk and how we talk. We must have the highest standards of morality, ethics and integrity if we are to continue to have influence.

Obviously, there’s a part of me that takes the world of violence and death very seriously. However, when it comes to protection, or when it comes to just the skill of shooting… I’ve gone to the range with sniper rifles and things like that.

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

I can never say ‚why‘ about anything I do. I suppose I can say ‚how‘ and ‚when‘ and ‚what.‘ But ‚why‘ is impenetrable to me.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

There is no coming to consciousness without pain.

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.

Since God created the world, He also created reality.

Change alone is unchanging.

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

Nature abhors annihilation.

Go on thinking that you don’t need to be read and you’ll find that it may become quite true: no one will feel the need tom read it because it is written for yourself alone; and the public won’t feel any impulse to gate crash such a private party.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

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

A strong argument for the religion of Christ is this – that offences against Charity are about the only ones which men on their death-beds can be made – not to understand – but to feel – as crime.

Only the shallow know themselves.

This is not Johnson’s war. This is America’s war. If I drop dead tomorrow, this war will still be with you.

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.

What do I care about Jupiter? Justice is a human issue, and I do not need a god to teach it to me.

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

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

The formula ‚Two and two make five‘ is not without its attractions.

We conceal it from ourselves in vain – we must always love something. In those matters seemingly removed from love, the feeling is secretly to be found, and man cannot possibly live for a moment without it.

Of two evils, choose neither.

In oneself lies the whole world and if you know how to look and learn, the door is there and the key is in your hand. Nobody on earth can give you either the key or the door to open, except yourself.

Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws.

Oh the nerves, the nerves; the mysteries of this machine called man! Oh the little that unhinges it, poor creatures that we are!

As this long and difficult war ends, I would like to address a few special words to the American people: Your steadfastness in supporting our insistence on peace with honor has made peace with honor possible.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That’s how the human species has done as well as it has.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

What we need is a system of thought – you might even call it a religion – that can bind humans together. A system that would fit the Republic of Chad as well as the United States: a system that would supply our idealistic young people with something to believe in.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

Younger scientists are extremely sensitive to the moral implications of all they do.

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

The strongest and most effective force in guaranteeing the long-term maintenance of power is not violence in all the forms deployed by the dominant to control the dominated, but consent in all the forms in which the dominated acquiesce in their own domination.

Abortion is clearly wrong.

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.