It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.

I’m never a reliable narrator, unbiased or objective.

Every increased possession loads us with a new weariness.

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

The object of the superior man is truth.

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.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

I have a hard time figuring out what kind of box to put me in, too, because I don’t know exactly what’s going on around me or why. But I need to stay outside of boxes because then I can look at what’s inside of them without being part of them.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

I don’t see myself as a philosopher. That’s awfully boring.

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy.

The child inside of you knows how to take things as they come, how to deal most effectively and happily with everything and everyone it encounters on this planet. If you can recapture that childlike essence of your being, you can stay ‚forever young at heart.‘

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

I don’t see that my majority opinions are going to be undone.

I think, in politics, half the people are gonna like you, and half the people are not gonna like you, no matter what you do or what you say… It’s like there are no right answers. If there were, everyone would choose the right answers. They’re all opinions.

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.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

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

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.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.

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

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

The common question that gets asked in business is, ‚why?‘ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‚why not?‘

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

It is foolish to tear one’s hair in grief, as though sorrow would be made less by baldness.

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

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

Were it not for imagination a man would be as happy in arms of a chambermaid as of a duchess.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

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

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

Words are loaded pistols.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.

I always think the everyday is more relevant than anything too grand because we all have to deal with it.

If a man or woman is born ten years sooner or later, their whole aspect and performance shall be different.

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

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.

We are anthill men upon an anthill world.

I want to reform the tax code so that it’s simple, fair, and asks the wealthiest households to pay higher taxes on incomes over $250,000 – the same rate we had when Bill Clinton was president; the same rate we had when our economy created nearly 23 million new jobs, the biggest surplus in history, and a lot of millionaires to boot.

I’m fascinated by the fact that we can’t grasp anything about time.

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

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.