I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective.

An overflow of good converts to bad.

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God’s universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves.

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

The ultimate connection is when you are connected to the creator of the universe.

It may be, it just may be, that life as we know it with its humanity is more unique than many have thought.

To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music – these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person’s point of view and see things from that person’s angle as well as from your own.

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?

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

I’m 5’11, so when I wear heels, it’s definitely a really good view that I have. I’m, like, 6’2 when I wear heels, so I tend to wear cowboy boots a lot.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.

Nature does nothing in vain.

I think if you follow anyone home, whether they live in Houston or London, and you sit at their dinner table and talk to them about their mother who has cancer or their child who is struggling in school, and their fears about watching their lives go by, I think we’re all the same.

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

And when it rains on your parade, look up rather than down. Without the rain, there would be no rainbow.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

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

What is the Tao Te Ching? Five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a God-realized being named Lao-tzu in ancient China dictated 81 verses which are regarded by many as the ultimate commentary on the nature of existence.

When I first went to places where people were suffering from war and persecution, I felt ashamed of my feelings of sadness. I could see more possibilities in my life.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

It seems the older you get, the more life comes into focus.

What’s real freedom? Real freedom is being able to not have my way and still be just as happy as if I did.

This is not a bad life.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be.

We really have to understand the person we want to love. If our love is only a will to possess, it is not love. If we only think of ourselves, if we know only our own needs and ignore the needs of the other person, we cannot love.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

Life is a song to me.

You can become blind by seeing each day as a similar one. Each day is a different one, each day brings a miracle of its own. It’s just a matter of paying attention to this miracle.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

I put up my thumb and it blotted out the planet Earth.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

When we believe the best of people, we let go of each thing they do that is hurtful to us. And we choose to think things like, ‚I don’t believe they meant to hurt me.‘ ‚Maybe they’re having a bad day or don’t feel well.‘ ‚They probably don’t even realize how they sound.‘

Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two.

A sword never kills anybody; it is a tool in the killer’s hand.

Were there none who were discontented with what they have, the world would never reach anything better.

His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly’s wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.

Technique is really personality. That is the reason why the artist cannot teach it, why the pupil cannot learn it, and why the aesthetic critic can understand it.

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff.

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.

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood – never.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

At first when I heard about climate change, I was a climate denier. I didn’t think it was happening. Because if there really was an existential crisis like that, that would threaten our civilisation, we wouldn’t be focusing on anything else. That would be our first priority. So I didn’t understand how that added up.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

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