Only those are fit to live who are not afraid to die.

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

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

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.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

When I was a young man, Dirac was my hero. He made a breakthrough, a new method of doing physics. He had the courage to simply guess at the form of an equation, the equation we now call the Dirac equation, and to try to interpret it afterwards.

I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that’s the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don’t understand.

When I was young I thought that money was the most important thing in life; now that I am old I know that it is.

Life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quickly you hardly catch it going.

I want you to feel happy and enjoy the theatre of my life the way that I do. No matter what happens with my music and wherever I go – that heart of that glamorous girl in New York will never be gone.

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

The love of life is necessary to the vigorous prosecution of any undertaking.

I think what’s important is for us to decipher what is honest and what is dishonest and be accepting of those things and not operating from fear.

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

Non-violence is the article of faith.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

The truth is lived, not taught.

Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.

Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.

Sometimes I think it would be easier to avoid old age, to die young, but then you’d never complete your life, would you? You’d never wholly know you.

What was God doing before the divine creation?

Where fear is, happiness is not.

The more you live in the present moment, the more the fear of death disappears.

Too much self-centered attitude, you see, brings, you see, isolation. Result: loneliness, fear, anger. The extreme self-centered attitude is the source of suffering.

Men shrink less from offending one who inspires love than one who inspires fear.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors.

Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

Among the many values in life, I appreciate freedom most.

People are terrified of me, and I want them to be.

Find ecstasy in life; the mere sense of living is joy enough.

Respect is one of life’s greatest treasures. I mean, what does it all add up to if you don’t have that?

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

Men’s ideas are the most direct emanations of their material state.

In modern war… you will die like a dog for no good reason.

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?

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

You sort of start thinking anything’s possible if you’ve got enough nerve.

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life’s wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

Life isn’t meant to be easy. It’s hard to take being on the top – or on the bottom. I guess I’m something of a fatalist. You have to have a sense of history, I think, to survive some of these things… Life is one crisis after another.

A lot of people ask me when I do a stunt, ‚Jackie, are you scared?‘ Of course I’m scared. I’m not Superman.

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.

Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.

Life’s tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late.

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

Life is not living in the suburbs with a white picket fence. That’s not life. Somehow our American culture has made it out that that’s what life needs to be – and that if it’s not that, it’s all screwed up. It’s not.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

No one is so brave that he is not disturbed by something unexpected.

The topic of leadership is a touchy one. A lot of leaders fail because they don’t have the bravery to touch that nerve or strike that chord. Throughout my years, I haven’t had that fear.

It is vain for the coward to flee; death follows close behind; it is only by defying it that the brave escape.