If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.

I’m confident in who I am. I’ve come to a place in my life where I’ve accepted things that are me, as opposed to feeling pressure to explain myself to people around me. That’s just the way I’ve always tried to be. It didn’t change when I became a star.

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.

I saw a picture of myself when I came out of the hospital. I didn’t recognize myself.

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

Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.

From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.

Everybody always laughs because I feel so much more comfortable with, like, a giant paper bag on my whole body and paint on my face. Sometimes I try really hard to take it all off. But inevitably what’s underneath is still not a straight edge. And I don’t think it ever will be.

You just have to have a simple faith.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

I’d like to be known for more than being the guy in the big suit.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

I’d always somehow felt slightly as if I’d been born in the wrong country.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

The good is the beautiful.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.

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.

I do think there must be some kind of interaction between your living life and the life that goes on from here.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.

Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

I’m almost like three people. There’s me the, Dolly, the person. There’s me, the star. And then there’s me, the manager.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

There is a fundamental question we all have to face. How are we to live our lives; by what principles and moral values will we be guided and inspired?

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.

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

In my relationship with God, I’ve learned that if I follow a ‚formula‘ for how I spend my time with Him, then I’m just accomplishing a checklist of things I feel obligated to do to please Him. This makes my spiritual life more about doing what I need to do to fulfill an obligation than something meaningful.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

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?

I’m not who people expect me to be. I’m not Henry Kissinger.

I think the materialist conception of history is valid.