It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.

In a way, the whole tangible universe itself is a vast residue, a skeleton of countless lives that have germinated in it and have left it, leaving behind them only a trifling, infinitesimal part of their riches.

There can be no liberty unless there is economic liberty.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

Those who cannot understand how to put their thoughts on ice should not enter into the heat of debate.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

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

Wisdom begins in wonder.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

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?

Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.

Anger is an acid that can do more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to anything on which it is poured.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Desire is the starting point of all achievement, not a hope, not a wish, but a keen pulsating desire which transcends everything.

I think that people just have this core desire to express who they are. And I think that’s always existed.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

There’s nothing wrong with anger provided you use it constructively.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

We should understand the source of our authority and something of the keys that control its power.

Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors.

There’s no one thing that is true. They’re all true.

Science investigates; religion interprets. Science gives man knowledge which is power; religion gives man wisdom which is control.

To be conscious means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one’s being added to that being.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

Women deeply want men who are competent and powerful. And I don’t mean power in that they can exert tyrannical control over others. That’s not power. That’s just corruption.

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

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

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

We never repent of having eaten too little.

Men’s ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.

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

Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as a heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere. Destroy this spirit and you have planted the seeds of despotism around your own doors.

Love and desire are the spirit’s wings to great deeds.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

Educate and inform the whole mass of the people… They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

It is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.

Anyone who seeks to destroy the passions instead of controlling them is trying to play the angel.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

The world’s biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman.

I’m a people pleaser. I hold a lot of things in. I’m always making sure everybody is okay. I usually don’t rage; I usually don’t curse.

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

If one oversteps the bounds of moderation, the greatest pleasures cease to please.

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

Intuition and concepts constitute… the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.