One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.

Our life is what our thoughts make it.

I give the name of cosmic sense to the more or less confused affinity that binds us psychologically to the All which envelops us. The existence of this feeling is indubitable, and apparently as old as the beginning of thought… The cosmic sense must have been born as soon as man found himself facing the forest, the sea and the stars.

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

If we don’t know life, how can we know death?

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.

Justice… is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed.

We have communion with Christ in His thoughts, views, and purposes; for His thoughts are our thoughts according to our capacity and sanctity. Believers take the same view of matters as Jesus does; that which pleases Him pleases them, and that which grieves His grieves them also.

Move fast and break things. Unless you are breaking stuff, you are not moving fast enough.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

What you are comes to you.

For me, money is not my definition of success. Inspiring people is a definition of success.

Anything you put your mind to and add your imagination into can make your life a lot better and a lot more fun.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world.

I thought one should have the attitude of ‚What do you care what other people think!‘

I think the materialist conception of history is valid.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.

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

Well, I think we tried very hard not to be overconfident, because when you get overconfident, that’s when something snaps up and bites you.

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.

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.

Knowledge is true opinion.

My philosophy is simple: It’s a down-home, common, horse-sense approach to things.

In the end, people are persuaded not by what we say, but by what they understand.

Remember happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.

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

It is what a man thinks of himself that really determines his fate.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

Fear doesn’t exist anywhere except in the mind.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

It’s a philosophy of life. A practice. If you do this, something will change, what will change is that you will change, your life will change, and if you can change you, you can perhaps change the world.

Our life is made by the death of others.

The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life… Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality.

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?

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

I would rather be able to appreciate things I can not have than to have things I am not able to appreciate.

My idea of an agreeable person is a person who agrees with me.

All the breaks you need in life wait within your imagination, Imagination is the workshop of your mind, capable of turning mind energy into accomplishment and wealth.

What was God doing before the divine creation?

The best augury of a man’s success in his profession is that he thinks it the finest in the world.

You notice how liberals keep saying, ‚If only Islam would have a Reformation‘ – it can’t have one. It says it can’t. It’s extremely dangerous in that way.

My philosophy in life is, Decide what you want to do. You have to have something to hope for.

The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.

Once I realized that right thinking is vital to victorious living, I got more serious about thinking about what I was thinking about, and choosing my thoughts carefully.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

There is no man living that can not do more than he thinks he can.

I have written too much history to have faith in it; and if anyone thinks I’m wrong, I am inclined to agree with him.

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

I feel like whatever you’ve done in your career, good or bad, it’s nothing but preparation for the big events to come.

Several excuses are always less convincing than one.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.