If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

Wisdom I know is social. She seeks her fellows. But Beauty is jealous, and illy bears the presence of a rival.

An overflow of good converts to bad.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

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

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

Being is the great explainer.

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

I am not one who was born in the possession of knowledge; I am one who is fond of antiquity, and earnest in seeking it there.

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.

Youth is a blunder; Manhood a struggle, Old Age a regret.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.

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

I just think cities are unnatural, basically. I know there are people who live happily in them, and I have cities that I love, too. But it’s a disaster that we have moved so far from nature.

One today is worth two tomorrows.

By gnawing through a dike, even a rat may drown a nation.

Looking back on the production of ‚Nevermind,‘ I’m embarrassed by it now. It’s closer to a Motley Crue record than it is a punk rock record.

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

In a magazine, one can get – from cover to cover – 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.

All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

I believe Karl Marx could have subscribed to the Sermon on the Mount.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

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

Whatever is well said by another, is mine.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

Probably because I’m from a middle class family, I have that nature in me that I don’t get too excited with big things.

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

When I write about a 15-year old, I jump, I return to the days when I was that age. It’s like a time machine. I can remember everything. I can feel the wind. I can smell the air. Very actually. Very vividly.

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

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.

How strange that nature does not knock, and yet does not intrude!

Reverence for life affords me my fundamental principle of morality.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

Changing your mind is probably one of the most beautiful things people can do. And I’ve changed my mind about a lot of things over the years.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

Our philosophy is that we care about people first.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

Oh, the difference between nearly right and exactly right.

To live is to think.

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

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

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.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more educated and more intelligent than college professors.

When men come to like a sea-life, they are not fit to live on land.

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

We are anthill men upon an anthill world.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

Thunder is good, thunder is impressive; but it is lightning that does the work.

When we think of the major threats to our national security, the first to come to mind are nuclear proliferation, rogue states and global terrorism. But another kind of threat lurks beyond our shores, one from nature, not humans – an avian flu pandemic.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.