I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

History should be written as philosophy.

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

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

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

The answer I found is you stay away from the people who make fun of you, and you join these ad hoc groups who understand your craziness.

So the bodhisattva saves all beings, not by preaching sermons to them, but by showing them that they are delivered, they are liberated, by the act of not being able to stop changing.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

I don’t think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.

That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

There is no wealth but life.

I gave in, and admitted that God was God.

I’m actually starting to like more and more people who have convictions that are unpopular.

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

Fiction is like a spider’s web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible.

I feel like everything we do comes down to how it looks. Even no branding is branding. For example, you had no face or image to put to my music at first. That was branding.

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.

Truth is a pathless land.

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

I don’t have a problem with Hulk Hogan. People say things and do things, and who am I to judge?

I never go into a situation with any type of expectations.

I don’t want enemies. I want friends, and I want them in all shapes, sizes, and colors, and loving whoever they want to.

Words are loaded pistols.

Nothing can be divided into more parts than it can possibly be constituted of. But matter (i.e. finite) cannot be constituted of infinite parts.

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

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.

If my mother knew I did this for a living, she’d kill me. She thinks I’m selling dope.

Having nothing, nothing can he lose.

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

By the time you’ve reached your sixties, you do know that one day you will die, and knowing that is at least the beginning of wisdom.

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

Men do not accept their prophets and slay them, but they love their martyrs and worship those whom they have tortured to death.

Let the path be open to talent.

One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

If I close my eyes and think of Hollywood, all I see is one big varicose vein.

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Once you feel loved by the universe, you’re already accepted, and you’re not really concerned about offending people.

Beauty is an outward gift, which is seldom despised, except by those to whom it has been refused.

I have seen many storms in my life. Most storms have caught me by surprise, so I had to learn very quickly to look further and understand that I am not capable of controlling the weather, to exercise the art of patience and to respect the fury of nature.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

There’s no one thing that is true. They’re all true.

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.

You’re imperfect, and you’re wired for struggle, but you are worthy of love and belonging.

An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup.

How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact!

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.

It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment’s grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one’s life.

More than anything else, I want the folks back at home to think right of me.