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.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

Even in high school I was very interested in history – why people do the things they do. As a kid I spent a lot of time trying to relate the past to the present.

All truth is simple… is that not doubly a lie?

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

Alas! how little does the memory of these human inhabitants enhance the beauty of the landscape!

To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust.

Sometimes, when I see my granddaughters make small discoveries of their own, I wish I were a child.

I think the materialist conception of history is valid.

The nature of the human mind is such that unless it is stimulated by images of things acting upon it from without, all remembrance of them passes easily away.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

I am not a yachting person, by nature, but I have just enough experience on the sea under sail to feel a certain nostalgia for it when I see a big white racing yacht heeled over at cruising speed on the ocean, and I can still tie a mean bowline knot on just about anything in less than 10 seconds.

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Tradition becomes our security, and when the mind is secure it is in decay.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.

My fear was not of death itself, but a death without meaning.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

A good song never gets old.

You are doomed to make choices. This is life’s greatest paradox.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

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

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

To some extent I liken slavery to death.

I can’t stress to you enough how much I can relate to teens being cyberbullied. Something that helps me is looking at old videos of me and my friends from middle school, or videos of my family. I love watching funny videos of my favorite people – it really cheers me up.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.

Sometimes I just sit still and enjoy God’s presence.

Reflect upon your present blessings of which every man has many – not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.

I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.

He who would pass his declining years with honor and comfort, should, when young, consider that he may one day become old, and remember when he is old, that he has once been young.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

In the good old days when I was a senator, I was my own man.

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

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

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.

They say miracles are past.

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?

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

It is, generally, in the season of prosperity that men discover their real temper, principles, and designs.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

I like today and perhaps a little future still, but the past is really something I’m not interested in. So, as far as I’m concerned, I like only the past of things and people I don’t know. When I know, I don’t care because I knew how it was.

It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.