Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

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

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long. I call it ‚Le Milieu Divin,‘ but I am being careful to include nothing esoteric and the minimum of explicit philosophy.

The more you can increase fear of drugs and crime, welfare mothers, immigrants and aliens, the more you control all the people.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

Human beings may well be unable to break free of the dictatorship of greed that spreads like a miasma over the world, but no longer will we be an inarticulate and ignorant humanity, confused by our enslavement to superior cruelty and weaponry.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be.

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

There was something undifferentiated and yet complete, which existed before Heaven and Earth. Soundless and formless, it depends on nothing and does not change. It operates everywhere and is free from danger. It may be considered the mother of the universe. I do not know its name; I call it Tao.

The magic of America is that we’re a free and open society with a mixed population. Part of our security is our freedom.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

The God who gave us life, gave us liberty at the same time.

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

May be is very well, but Must is the master. It is my duty to show justice without recompense.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

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?

Man – a being in search of meaning.

For my part, I desire to see the time when education – and by its means, morality, sobriety, enterprise and industry – shall become much more general than at present, and should be gratified to have it in my power to contribute something to the advancement of any measure which might have a tendency to accelerate the happy period.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

You have freedom when you’re easy in your harness.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

Everybody looks like clones and the only people you notice are my age. I don’t notice anybody unless they look great, and every now and again they do, and they are usually 70.

I want to do a certain thing in the world, and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.

By indignities men come to dignities.

The society based on production is only productive, not creative.

Empire and liberty.

Assuming if there’s such a thing as reality, if you have a false relationship with it, how can you do anything but fail?

What goes up must come down.

Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: it is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.

There are plenty of people who are, I think, completely racist who love hip-hop.

And yet it moves.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Look, freedom is an overwhelming American notion. The idea that we want to see the world, the peoples of the world free is something that all of us subscribe to.

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin. And therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words ‚Ich bin ein Berliner!‘

There is no such thing as part freedom.

Modern science says: ‚The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.‘ From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.

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

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

I believe this government cannot endure permanently, half slave and half free.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.