I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about dying, but I like to think that I’ve – if it did occur – that I would die peacefully and not make too much of a fuss about it.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

It is better to be beautiful than to be good. But… it is better to be good than to be ugly.

Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.

People who think too much before they act don’t act too much.

I try to teach through my opinions, through my speeches, how wrong it is to judge people on the basis of what they look like, color of their skin, whether they’re men or women.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

Knowledge of what is does not open the door directly to what should be.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

Be content with what you are, and wish not change; nor dread your last day, nor long for it.

I think that when we know that we actually do live in uncertainty, then we ought to admit it; it is of great value to realize that we do not know the answers to different questions. This attitude of mind – this attitude of uncertainty – is vital to the scientist, and it is this attitude of mind which the student must first acquire.

How inappropriate to call this planet Earth when it is quite clearly Ocean.

I’m sorry, it’s true. Having children really changes your view on these things. We’re born, we live for a brief instant, and we die. It’s been happening for a long time. Technology is not changing it much – if at all.

The fact that you are willing to say, ‚I do not understand, and it is fine,‘ is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.

You pray for rain, you gotta deal with the mud too. That’s a part of it.

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

I’m like a recovering perfectionist. For me it’s one day at a time.

No one can outrun death. It will catch up to all of us eventually.

He not busy being born is busy dying.

In the brute physical world, and the one encompassed by medicine, there are all too many things that could kill you, don’t kill you, and then leave you considerably weaker.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

I’m not a complete psychopath. Am I partially? Sure. I’ll accept that. But I’m not a complete psychopath.

It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that’s how we’ve got to live.

You’re dead if you aim only for kids. Adults are only kids grown up, anyway.

Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.

We should be too big to take offense and too noble to give it.

My personal telephone book is a book of the dead now. I’m so old. Almost all of my friends have died, and I don’t have the guts to take their names out of the book.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

It isn’t that they can’t see the solution. It is that they can’t see the problem.

I’ve learned that you shouldn’t go through life with a catcher’s mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back.

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.

Belief creates the actual fact.

We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

We cannot direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails.

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight… the truly wise person is colorblind.

The more a person seeks security, the more that person gives up control over their life.

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

There is something curiously boring about somebody else’s happiness.

Act enthusiastic and you will be enthusiastic.

At 30 a man should know himself like the palm of his hand, know the exact number of his defects and qualities, know how far he can go, foretell his failures – be what he is. And, above all, accept these things.

It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.

Ask an older person you respect to tell you his or her greatest regret.

Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?… It is necessary to accompany them with mercy.

Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.

Success is getting what you want. Happiness is wanting what you get.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

When I wake up, I expect things to be good. If they’re not, then I try to set about trying to make them as good as I can ‚cause I know I’m gonna have to live that day anyway. So why not try to make the most of it if you can? Some days, they pan out a little better than others, but you still gotta always just try.

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

Inferiors revolt in order that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior. Such is the state of mind which creates revolutions.

If you believe that feeling bad or worrying long enough will change a past or future event, then you are residing on another planet with a different reality system.

What is important in life is life, and not the result of life.

Say not, ‚I have found the truth,‘ but rather, ‚I have found a truth.‘

The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.

No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.

Take no thought of who is right or wrong or who is better than. Be not for or against.

If I went back to my 20-year-old self, what I would tell my 20-year-old self is, ‚You don’t know anything.‘ Because everyone, when they’re young, they think they know what’s going on in the world, and you don’t.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.