Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.

I know My God commands, whose power no power resists.

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.

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

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice… that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

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.

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.

Being part of a community with a church at its centre and singin‘ hymns is a great thing to do.

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.

If God can’t get you to obey Him concerning your money, he won’t get to anything else you got.

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

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.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

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

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

The word ‚happy‘ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

Science is nothing but perception.

I do think there must be some kind of interaction between your living life and the life that goes on from here.

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Things in themselves have no life in them. A car can’t comfort or encourage you. A house means nothing if there’s no life and love inside.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

Never give an order that can’t be obeyed.

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever – this is a somewhat new kind of religion.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

The effect of power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor that ends by killing the victim’s sympathies.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.

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

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

He who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.