It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others.

I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the ‚Not Me,‘ that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, ‚Nature.‘

Evil is whatever distracts.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

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.

Science is nothing but perception.

I’m so happy I discovered early how wonderful music makes me feel.

From wonder into wonder existence opens.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

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.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

Heaven is long-enduring, and earth continues long. The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure and continue thus long is because they do not live of, or for, themselves.

It is a vain hope to make people happy by politics.

The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

Happiness is not being pained in body or troubled in mind.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads?

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza’s God, it won’t love us in return.

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.

The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quiet, alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

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.

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

Most people would assume my business success, and the wealth that comes with it, have brought me happiness. But I know I am successful, wealthy, and connected because I am happy.

All things in the world come from being. And being comes from non-being.

I believe the right question to ask, respecting all ornament, is simply this; was it done with enjoyment, was the carver happy while he was about it?

Happiness makes up in height for what it lacks in length.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

If you plan on being anything less than you are capable of being, you will probably be unhappy all the days of your life.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

By taking a second wife he pays the highest compliment to the first, by showing that she made him so happy as a married man, that he wishes to be so a second time.

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

Falsehood is a perennial spring.

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

Surely our job while we’re here on Earth is to learn about the world, not to create parallel universes.

Where thou art, that is home.

Recommend virtue to your children; it alone, not money, can make them happy. I speak from experience.

You can’t be happy by doing something groovy.

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.

As a sportsperson, the best thing is people recognising you and loving you for what you do. For me, glamour is 100 people in the hotel feeling happy to see you.

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.

There is no way to happiness – happiness is the way.

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore; only the life I have lived. The pain now is part of the happiness then.

Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.

At the Carter Center we work with victims of oppression, and we give support to human rights heroes.

It isn’t what you have, or who you are, or where you are, or what you are doing that makes you happy or unhappy. It is what you think about.

The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.

Drink because you are happy, but never because you are miserable.