I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.

I was never ignorant, as far as being experienced in classrooms and learning about different subjects and actually soaking it up, so I checked into college for a little bit. I took classes at a community college in West L.A. I took psychology, English, and philosophy.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.

The end is the beginning of all things, Suppressed and hidden, Awaiting to be released through the rhythm Of pain and pleasure.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.

The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

Iron rusts from disuse; water loses its purity from stagnation… even so does inaction sap the vigor of the mind.

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.

There is a certain majesty in simplicity which is far above all the quaintness of wit.

We must conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members.

Only that thing is free which exists by the necessities of its own nature, and is determined in its actions by itself alone.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

Error is always more busy than truth.

We are all full of weakness and errors; let us mutually pardon each other our follies – it is the first law of nature.

Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.

We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.

The charm of fame is so great that we like every object to which it is attached, even death.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

It was a favorite expression of Theophrastus that time was the most valuable thing that a man could spend.

I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

Evil is whatever distracts.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

Death wasn’t part of God’s original plan for humanity, and the Bible calls death an enemy – the last enemy to be destroyed.

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.

The formula ‚Two and two make five‘ is not without its attractions.

What pity is it That we can die, but once to serve our country.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

Reality is a sliding door.

Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet.

I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.

No man was ever wise by chance.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

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.

He had a massive stroke. He died with his tie on. Do you think that could be our generation’s equivalent of that old saying about dying with your boots on?

The philosophical question before us is, when we make an observation of our track in the past, does the result of our observation become real in the same sense that the final state would be defined if an outside observer were to make the observation?

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.

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

I’m not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose… it’ll be much harder to detect.

The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

Fear is the mother of morality.

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

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.

Let him that is without stone among you cast the first thing he can lay his hands on.