If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.

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

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

If you’re white and you’re wrong, then you’re wrong; if you’re black and you’re wrong, you’re wrong. People are people. Black, blue, pink, green – God make no rules about color; only society make rules where my people suffer, and that why we must have redemption and redemption now.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

There is no birth of consciousness without pain.

Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office.

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

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

The ‚I think‘ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‚I breathe‘ which actually does accompany them.

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Deliver me from writers who say the way they live doesn’t matter. I’m not sure a bad person can write a good book, If art doesn’t make us better, then what on earth is it for.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness… and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

The truth is, hardly any of us have ethical energy enough for more than one really inflexible point of honor.

I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.

The difference between a moral man and a man of honor is that the latter regrets a discreditable act, even when it has worked and he has not been caught.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

A Bill of Rights is what the people are entitled to against every government, and what no just government should refuse, or rest on inference.

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.

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

The world itself is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power – and nothing else!

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

Of course, animals have to be killed for food or to prevent their doing injury to others or to property. But such killing is too often carried out without regard to the pain inflicted.

For a war to be just three conditions are necessary – public authority, just cause, right motive.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

In the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and strong nothing can surpass it.

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

For my part, I desire to see the time when education – and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry – shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate the happy period.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be.

It’s not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren’t doing.

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.

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.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

As we know, while our species remains alive, everybody has the sacred duty to be optimistic. Ethically, any other behaviour wouldn’t be admissible.

I’ve been very lucky, and therefore I owe it to try and reduce the inequity in the world. And that’s kind of a religious belief. I mean, it’s at least a moral belief.

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.

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

No one can outrun death. It will catch up to all of us eventually.

Nothing is unchangeable but the inherent and unalienable rights of man.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

What goes up must come down.

May be is very well, but Must is the master. It is my duty to show justice without recompense.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

All truth is simple… is that not doubly a lie?

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.

Say there’s a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter – for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that’s saying is that he’s living a fantasy life of rebellion.