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.

The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life… Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality.

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.

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

There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

Of two evils, choose neither.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

Yes, there is a terrible moral in ‚Dorian Gray‘ – a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.

The safest course is to do nothing against one’s conscience. With this secret, we can enjoy life and have no fear from death.

I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

Today we are engaged in a deadly global struggle for those who would intimidate, torture, and murder people for exercising the most basic freedoms. If we are to win this struggle and spread those freedoms, we must keep our own moral compass pointed in a true direction.

A man dies when he refuses to stand up for that which is right. A man dies when he refuses to stand up for justice. A man dies when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.

I find it amusing that I’m on the Internet now, because I’ve criticized it, but mainly I’ve criticized it on the basis of, ‚What are you going to do with it?‘

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.

What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.

I was standing on a ladder outside the Homestead juvenile immigrant detention center outside Miami, looking over the fence, and I saw children lined up like prisoners. They had been separated from their families and put in this private detention facility. It was horrible.

Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price.

A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

I think all Americans believe in human rights. And health is an often overlooked aspect of basic human rights. And it’s one that’s easily corrected. The reason I say that is that many of the diseases that we treat around the world, I knew when I was a child. My mother was a registered nurse. And they no longer exist in our country.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

When Hillary was First Lady, we went to the Beijing Women’s Conference. She courageously stood up and spoke out on behalf of human rights and women’s rights, inspiring millions to fight for a better future.

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

The worst government is often the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and humane. But when fanatics are on top there is no limit to oppression.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.

In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those contracted by the body.

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

To be ashamed of one’s immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one’s morality.

Is there a sharper commentary on American culture and the world than The Simpsons?

I don’t think that faith, whatever you’re being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained. And I don’t want to explain this whole life business through truth, science. There’s so much mystery. There’s so much awe.

The book, ’12 Rules For Life,‘ is a very serious book. There’s elements of humor in it, but I’m trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it’s necessary to live a upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there’s hell to pay if you don’t do that.

Sorry, I’m still a dialectical materialist.

Only a man’s character is the real criterion of worth.

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

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

‚Pure experience‘ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.

When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.

If you must break the law, do it to seize power: in all other cases observe it.

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

It’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

Hell is other people.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live as if there isn’t and to die to find out that there is.

Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that’s all. So we direct our values to material things.

Our philosophy is that we care about people first.

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit.

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think and feel.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

Well, I thought the deal was, when you went to work for the government you weren’t supposed to make money!