I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

We know that the nation that goes all-in on innovation today will own the global economy tomorrow. This is an edge America cannot surrender.

Language is the dress of thought.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.

There is a difference between happiness and wisdom: he that thinks himself the happiest man is really so; but he that thinks himself the wisest is generally the greatest fool.

The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself. The Way of Heaven does one good but never does one harm. The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.

One thing I’ve tried to never do is make wish lists. I try to have a very steppingstone mentality about this whole thing, where as soon as you make one step you visualize the next step, not five steps ahead.

We must distinguish between speaking to deceive and being silent to be reserved.

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

If you want to talk about something new, you have to make up a new kind of language.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

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

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

Don’t use words too big for the subject. Don’t say ‚infinitely‘ when you mean ‚very‘; otherwise you’ll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite.

It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out; it’s the pebble in your shoe.

The course of true love never did run smooth.

Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

Sarcasm I now see to be, in general, the language of the devil; for which reason I have long since as good as renounced it.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

I give the name of cosmic sense to the more or less confused affinity that binds us psychologically to the All which envelops us. The existence of this feeling is indubitable, and apparently as old as the beginning of thought… The cosmic sense must have been born as soon as man found himself facing the forest, the sea and the stars.

A lot of the things that will really improve the world fortunately aren’t dependent on Washington doing something different.

The upward course of a nation’s history is due in the long run to the soundness of heart of its average men and women.

The Global Fund is a central player in the progress being achieved on HIV, TB and malaria. It channels resources to help countries fight these diseases. I believe in its impact because I have seen it firsthand.

Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together.

Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice… that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.

Just as the humble, unassuming, assenting ‚O.K.‘ has deposed the more affirmative ‚Yes,‘ so the little cringe and hesitation and approximation of ‚like‘ are a help to young people who are struggling to negotiate the shoals and rapids of ethnic identity, the street, and general correctness.

I read the Bible to myself; I’ll take any translation, any edition, and read it aloud, just to hear the language, hear the rhythm, and remind myself how beautiful English is.

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.

It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things.

The country has come a long way in race relations, but the pendulum swings so far back. Everyone wants to be so sensitive.

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

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

Being politically correct means saying what’s polite rather than what’s accurate. I like to be accurate.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

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.

The universe is not indifferent to our existence – it depends on it.

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

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

It’s really easy to have a nice philosophy about openness, but moving the world in that direction is a different thing. It requires both understanding where you want to go and being pragmatic about getting there.

Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we’ve ever known.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.