I’m an idealist without illusions.

After all, life hasn’t much to offer except youth, and I suppose for older people, the love of youth in others.

Knowledge is true opinion.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

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

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

I don’t like looking back. I’m always constantly looking forward. I’m not the one to sort of sit and cry over spilt milk. I’m too busy looking for the next cow.

If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubts of my own.

Our life is made by the death of others.

I mean, I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

Man is, properly speaking, based upon hope, he has no other possession but hope; this world of his is emphatically the place of hope.

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.

The philosophical question before us is, when we make an observation of our track in the past, does the result of our observation become real in the same sense that the final state would be defined if an outside observer were to make the observation?

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be.

As you get older, time speeds up but life slows down.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.

To the dumb question, ‚Why me?‘ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‚Why not?‘

Religion is not going to come up with any new arguments.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

When fate hands you a lemon, make lemonade.

Look at situations from all angles, and you will become more open.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

I like gaps; all my stories have gaps. It seems this is the way people’s lives present themselves.

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.

The long time to come when I shall not exist has more effect on me than this short present time, which nevertheless seems endless.

Little things console us because little things afflict us.

We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop.

I believe that a scientist looking at nonscientific problems is just as dumb as the next guy.

For many men, the acquisition of wealth does not end their troubles, it only changes them.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

Falsehood is a perennial spring.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

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

All partisan movements add to the fullness of our understanding of society as a whole. They never detract; or, in any case, one must not allow them to do so. Experience adds to experience.

Man is fond of counting his troubles, but he does not count his joys. If he counted them up as he ought to, he would see that every lot has enough happiness provided for it.

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.

I know how fiction matters to me, because if I want to express myself, I have to make up a story. Some people call it imagination. To me, it’s not imagination. It’s just a way of watching.

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

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

I’ve made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I’m convinced of the opposite.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

Do creative, social, and civic attitudes change depending on where we live? Yes, I think so.

If you only have a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

Thought is the parent of the deed.

Americans admire a people who can scratch a desert and produce a garden. The Israelis have shown qualities that Americans identify with: guts, patriotism, idealism, a passion for freedom. I have seen it. I know. I believe that.

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

Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.