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

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.

That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent.

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

You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I’m innocent. You’ve got to believe I’m innocent. If you don’t, take my job.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

I wish that the Indians believed me a god, for upon the report of an enemy’s valor oftentimes depends the success of a battle, and false reports have many times done as great things as true courage and resolution.

I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.

I could never identify with that word, ‚weak.‘

Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

God does not play dice.

The good is the beautiful.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

Storms make trees take deeper roots.

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

For me, my secularism is, India first. I say, the philosophy of my party is ‚Justice to all. Appeasement to none.‘ This is our secularism.

I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.

So I say to you, Ask and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Responsibility, I believe, accrues through privilege.

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

I have a dogmatic certainty: God is in every person’s life. God is in everyone’s life. Even if the life of a person has been a disaster, even if it is destroyed by vices, drugs or anything else – God is in this person’s life. You can – you must – try to seek God in every human life.

You can’t hold a man down without staying down with him.

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.

I am a strong believer that without justice, there is no peace. No lasting peace, anyway.

It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

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.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

One of my major keys is actually the master keys: God.

I believe in universal health care. And I am not afraid to say so.

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

Luck is a matter of preparation meeting opportunity.

Use, do not abuse… neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

Climbing to the top demands strength, whether it is to the top of Mount Everest or to the top of your career.

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

I believe in the battle-whether it’s the battle of a campaign or the battle of this office, which is a continuing battle.

Open-minded people tend to be interested in Buddhism because Buddha urged people to investigate things – he didn’t just command them to believe.

The word ‚happy‘ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

Superstition is the religion of feeble minds.

I am one of those people who believes that the solution to the world’s problems is to be found behind the Iron Curtain.

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

Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.

I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

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

I don’t believe we are supposed to go through life defeated and not having enough money to pay our bills or send our kids to college.

No one can outrun death. It will catch up to all of us eventually.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

At the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. On the cranky left, that is very annoying; I can see that.