Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.

I can never say ‚why‘ about anything I do. I suppose I can say ‚how‘ and ‚when‘ and ‚what.‘ But ‚why‘ is impenetrable to me.

Of course humans like to explore, and we should. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s more than that. It’s essential for your children and your children’s children.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

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.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

All the world is full of suffering. It is also full of overcoming.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.

The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking at things.

I don’t believe in death, neither in flesh nor in spirit.

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live as if there isn’t and to die to find out that there is.

I thought how unpleasant it is to be locked out; and I thought how it is worse, perhaps, to be locked in.

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

The Tao teaches us not to intervene and interfere. The things we love we have to learn to leave alone. And the people we love we have to learn to let them be.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

On September 11 2001, America felt its vulnerability even to threats that gather on the other side of the Earth. We resolved then, and we are resolved today, to confront every threat from any source that could bring sudden terror and suffering to America.

Man is a clever animal who behaves like an imbecile.

By indignities men come to dignities.

I think and that is all that I am.

Change alone is unchanging.

From wonder into wonder existence opens.

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

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

You can’t deny laughter; when it comes, it plops down in your favorite chair and stays as long as it wants.

I joyfully hasten to meet death. If it come before I have had opportunity to develop all my artistic faculties, it will come, my hard fate notwithstanding, too soon, and I should probably wish it later – yet even then I shall be happy, for will it not deliver me from a state of endless suffering?

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.

Truth is what works.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

I read Plato’s ‚Republic.‘ I read it through about five times until I could actually understand it.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much more than that. So are we all.

It’s not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren’t doing.

Become slower in your journey through life. Practice yoga and meditation if you suffer from ‚hurry sickness.‘ Become more introspective by visiting quiet places such as churches, museums, mountains and lakes. Give yourself permission to read at least one novel a month for pleasure.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

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

The universe is not indifferent to our existence – it depends on it.

Non-violence is the article of faith.

Only one in four jokes ever works, and I still can’t predict what people will laugh at.

We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.