Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

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

I can’t very well be teaching one way and living my life another way. What I do in life must be consistent with the things I say. And the same goes for you.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

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

I happen to believe there is evil in the world.

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.

Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

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

Gold was a gift to Jesus. If it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me!

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

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.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

To be is to do.

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

I try to see the good in everybody, and I don’t care who people are as long as they’re themselves, whatever that is.

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

It could be if I fight in front of one person or one million people. It’s still the same emotions.

Labor gives birth to ideas.

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?

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

For me, writing has always come out of living a fairly to-the-bone kind of life, just really being present to a lot of life. The writing has been really a byproduct of that.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

I just have a thing in my brain that when I’m about to do something that’s genuine or authentic, I think of it in song form. I’ll be like, ‚Yo, this is a human emotion that no one talks about.‘

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

To an ordinary human being, love means nothing if it does not mean loving some people more than others.

If it’s going to come out eventually, better have it come out immediately.

As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

Exaggeration is truth that has lost its temper.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.

What’s the good of drawing in the next breath if all you do is let it out and draw in another?

One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.

The product of mental labor – science – always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.

I’m totally myself.

I welcome and seek your ideas, but do not bring me small ideas; bring me big ideas to match our future.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

The public is the only critic whose opinion is worth anything at all.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

The greatest way to live with honor in this world is to be what we pretend to be.

A man’s character is his guardian divinity.

We must ensure that technology is accessible, affordable, and adds value.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.