Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right.

I like pushing boundaries.

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

Don’t ever criticize yourself. Don’t go around all day long thinking, ‚I’m unattractive, I’m slow, I’m not as smart as my brother.‘ God wasn’t having a bad day when he made you… If you don’t love yourself in the right way, you can’t love your neighbour. You can’t be as good as you are supposed to be.

Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.

Life can be boring unless you put some effort into it.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

Lawless are they that make their wills their law.

Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

I think I could go away tomorrow. I’ve already accomplished something. It’s such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.

Let him that would move the world first move himself.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

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

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.

Before all else, be armed.

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

Most of us aren’t defeated in one decisive battle. We are defeated one tiny, seemingly insignificant surrender at a time that chips away at who we should really be.

Vices are sometimes only virtues carried to excess!

It is a good thing for an uneducated man to read books of quotations.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

What starts the process, really, are laughs and slights and snubs when you are a kid. If your anger is deep enough and strong enough, you learn that you can change those attitudes by excellence, personal gut performance.

Our greatest evils flow from ourselves.

Nothing has such power to broaden the mind as the ability to investigate systematically and truly all that comes under thy observation in life.

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?

A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

When you face a ‚performance‘ that might provoke the ‚I’m scared‘ response, choose love and approach your opportunity as a chance to dance with God. It’s more fun than ‚Dancing with the Stars!‘

I always say the strength of democracy lies in criticism. If there is no criticism, that means there is no democracy. And if you want to grow, you must invite criticism. And I want to grow; I want to invite criticism.

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and establishing those properties by experiments, and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them.

We have got to change our ethics and our financial system and our whole way of understanding the world. It has to be a world in which people live rather than die; a sustainable world. It could be great.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

Shame may restrain what law does not prohibit.

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

I am against nature. I don’t dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can’t touch with decay.

A man wrapped up in himself makes a very small bundle.

Success is steady progress toward one’s personal goals.

I continuously go further and further learning about my own limitations, my body limitation, psychological limitations. It’s a way of life for me.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

The way for a young man to rise is to improve himself in every way he can, never suspecting that anybody wishes to hinder him.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity.

I’m sure like everyone else I’m not always the happiest if I don’t do a good job in quali or the race or whatever, so I think beating myself up sometimes makes me work harder.

Testing oneself is best when done alone.

History should be written as philosophy.

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.

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.

Don’t be humble… you’re not that great.

There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are – more humane.

Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult, is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.

If you even dream of beating me you’d better wake up and apologize.

Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.