Plato was a bore.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

The lie is a condition of life.

Romcoms are hard in a lot of ways: they’re built to be buoyant. It’s easy to demean them.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that’s what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.

What is imponderable in the world is greater than what we can handle.

Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

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

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

Right after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, amid all the cheers and applause, there were a few critical comments questioning the legality of the act.

There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.

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

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

I feel strange when I get applauded by people in power… because it’s obvious that it’s them I’m criticizing, but they can’t show that in front of the cameras. It’s quite funny sometimes.

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

Which death is preferably to every other? ‚The unexpected‘.

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

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

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.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‚War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.‘

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

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

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

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.

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

Knowledge is true opinion.

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

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‚Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?‘

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.

The ‚I think‘ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‚I breathe‘ which actually does accompany them.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

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.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.