I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

If life is a checker game, someone else is moving the pieces. It isn’t us. Don’t be surprised by amazing coincidences. There are no accidents. Consider, as I learned to do, the incredible interconnectedness of all of life.

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

He only employs his passion who can make no use of his reason.

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

It is impossible to reason without arriving at a Supreme Being.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

You’re president, if you conclude my judgment is not the right judgment, I abide by that, but I want an opportunity to have an input.

Though men determine, the gods doo dispose: and oft times many things fall out betweene the cup and the lip.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life… Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

Science is but an image of the truth.

I’m not a marketing person. I don’t ask myself questions. I go by instinct.

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

Being prime minister is a lonely job… you cannot lead from the crowd.

My parents had us in church every Sunday, every Wednesday. It was more of a tradition at that point; I didn’t have a personal relationship with the Lord until I went to the altar call one Sunday, and the youth pastor told us to make a decision for ourselves.

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

I think that God gives you your own will and choices. I don’t believe that we’re supposed to drag ourselves through life defeated and not see God’s blessings. But you have to make the right choices and follow that still, small voice within you. Because I think that’s how God leads us.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

I think being an atheist is something you are, not something you do.

There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn.

My parents pretty much realized that I would do whatever I wanted, and that was it, really.

All my life, whenever it comes time to make a decision, I make it and forget about it.

Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

I’m an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call ‚the last illusion.‘ The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what’s going on but that the planets know what’s going on.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

Sometimes if you want to get rid of the gun, you have to pick the gun up.

Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates.

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.

We spend so much time sublimatin‘, thinkin‘ about, ‚What am I going to have for lunch, dinner?‘

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

God does not play dice.

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

The word ‚happy‘ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

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?

If I don’t run for president, we’ll all be OK.

Entrepreneurs are natural problem-solvers, which means that we always have ideas for new businesses popping into our heads. Having a lot of options is great, but sometimes it can be hard to focus on one when you are keen to move onto the next.

I shall never be a heretic; I may err in dispute, but I do not wish to decide anything finally; on the other hand, I am not bound by the opinions of men.

No country can act wisely simultaneously in every part of the globe at every moment of time.

There are definitely people who disagree with certain creative decisions you make. Pleasing everyone is pretty hard.

When I had to make a decision whether or not an activity was appropriate for the Sabbath, I simply asked myself, ‚What sign do I want to give to God?‘ That question made my choices about the Sabbath day crystal clear.

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.

When making your choice in life, do not neglect to live.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

I don’t care whether you’re driving a hybrid or an SUV. If you’re headed for a cliff, you have to change direction. That’s what the American people called for in November, and that’s what we intend to deliver.

Perhaps it is better to be irresponsible and right, than to be responsible and wrong.

To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage, or of principle.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

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

In matters of truth the fact that you don’t want to publish something is, nine times out of ten, a proof that you ought to publish it.