No man was ever wise by chance.

I’m not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I’m living on.

And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.

If you wished to be loved, love.

Reason is the enemy of faith.

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

Where ignorance is our master, there is no possibility of real peace.

No one was ever great without some portion of divine inspiration.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

When I start to write, I don’t have any plan at all. I just wait for the story to come.

You just have to have a simple faith.

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.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

The poets are only the interpreters of the gods.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – ‚tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

Let others lead small lives, but not you. Let others argue over small things, but not you. Let others cry over small hurts, but not you. Let others leave their future in someone else’s hands, but not you.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

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.

Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted.

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter – for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way.

Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.

Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price.

Hope is a waking dream.

We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival.

He shines in the second rank, who is eclipsed in the first.

If a man could have half of his wishes, he would double his troubles.

The great question of our time is, ‚Will we be motivated by materialistic philosophy or by spiritual power?‘

Efforts and courage are not enough without purpose and direction.

Howard Zinn was magical as a teacher. Witty, irreverent, and wise, he loved what he was teaching and clearly wanted his students to love it, also.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

There is no birth of consciousness without pain.

Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

Great geniuses have the shortest biographies.

Step with care and great tact, and remember that Life’s a Great Balancing Act.

From the moment I started writing raps, I was always aware of the pressure. I always wanted to live up to how huge Snoop got, how huge Dre got, how huge Pac got. I was always aware.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

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.

There is nothing new in the world except the history you do not know.

Great men are like eagles, and build their nest on some lofty solitude.

If you enjoy living, it is not difficult to keep the sense of wonder.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

If you hold a cat by the tail you learn things you cannot learn any other way.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

Through perseverance many people win success out of what seemed destined to be certain failure.

The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.

We should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time’s carcass.

You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it’s going to happen.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God; trust also in me.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.