No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

I do not believe any of the statistical claims that are made about public opinion. I don’t see why anybody does.

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

If the law is upheld only by government officials, then all law is at an end.

Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it.

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.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God – but to create him.

Those who govern, having much business on their hands, do not generally like to take the trouble of considering and carrying into execution new projects. The best public measures are therefore seldom adopted from previous wisdom, but forced by the occasion.

By the sole fact of his entering into ‚Thought,‘ man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion.

To be is to do.

I like policy. It’s why I decided to enter government. The other thing I like about government – you have good days, you have bad days, but you never have a boring day, and that’s important to me.

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

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.

The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It’s a battle you can’t hope to win – it’s a battle that’s going to go on forever. It’s part of the human condition.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

Heaven is long-enduring, and earth continues long. The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure and continue thus long is because they do not live of, or for, themselves.

There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.

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.

You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also… your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

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

The more laws and order are made prominent, the more thieves and robbers there will be.

A jug fills drop by drop.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

In a way, the whole tangible universe itself is a vast residue, a skeleton of countless lives that have germinated in it and have left it, leaving behind them only a trifling, infinitesimal part of their riches.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

All men are equal before fish.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

You just have to have a simple faith.

Law is mind without reason.

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.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

The good is the beautiful.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

Reason is the enemy of faith.

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

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

Our philosophy is that we care about people first.

If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.

As long as your body is healthy and under control and death is distant, try to save your soul; when death is immanent what can you do?

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

History should be written as philosophy.

A man lives by believing something: not by debating and arguing about many things.