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.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

The humanists‘ replacement for religion: work really hard and somehow you’ll either save yourself or you’ll be immortal. Of course, that’s a total joke, and our progress is nothing. There may be progress in technology but there’s no ethical progress whatsoever.

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

Forever is composed of nows.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world.

Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.

I think where political issues invade moral situations, spiritual leaders have to speak out.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

I think the materialist conception of history is valid.

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

It is a man’s own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

Few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.

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.

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

I don’t like Los Angeles. The people are awful and terribly shallow, and everybody wants to be famous but nobody wants to play the game. I’m from New York. I will kill to get what I need.

I read Plato’s ‚Republic.‘ I read it through about five times until I could actually understand it.

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.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

The moral virtues, then, are produced in us neither by nature nor against nature. Nature, indeed, prepares in us the ground for their reception, but their complete formation is the product of habit.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.

I’m opposed to any policy that would deny in our country any human being from access to public safety, public education, or public health, period.

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

There was something undifferentiated and yet complete, which existed before Heaven and Earth. Soundless and formless, it depends on nothing and does not change. It operates everywhere and is free from danger. It may be considered the mother of the universe. I do not know its name; I call it Tao.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

To do nothing is also a good remedy.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

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

The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.

The words of truth are always paradoxical.

I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.

I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one’s memories.

There is no such thing as part freedom.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

God does not play dice.

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.

The rise of capitalist practice and morality brought with it a radical revision of how the commons are treated, and also of how they are conceived.

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

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Anyone can be a moral individual, concerned with human rights and problems; but only a college professor, a trained expert, can solve technical problems by ‚sophisticated‘ methods. Ergo, it is only problems of the latter sort that are important or real.

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

I just know what is right and I want to do what is right.