Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will, much more a man who hath any honesty in him.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

Repeal the Missouri Compromise – repeal all compromises – repeal the Declaration of Independence – repeal all past history, you still cannot repeal human nature. It will be the abundance of man’s heart that slavery extension is wrong; and out of the abundance of his heart, his mouth will continue to speak.

There is a fundamental question we all have to face. How are we to live our lives; by what principles and moral values will we be guided and inspired?

May be is very well, but Must is the master. It is my duty to show justice without recompense.

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

Only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today, could justify non-violence.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

All the commandments: You shall not commit adultery, you shall not kill, you shall not steal, you shall not covet, and so on, are summed up in this single command: You must love your neighbor as yourself.

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

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

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

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

Lawless are they that make their wills their law.

The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.

But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

You cannot be in a position of power and destroy the life of another person.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

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

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

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

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend must have a long head or a very short creed.

Those who have virtue always in their mouths, and neglect it in practice, are like a harp, which emits a sound pleasing to others, while itself is insensible of the music.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

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.

Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

It is more from carelessness about truth than from intentionally lying that there is so much falsehood in the world.

To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

And whether you’re an honest man, or whether you’re a thief, depends on whose solicitor has given me my brief.

The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

His was a great sin who first invented consciousness. Let us lose it for a few hours.

One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.

Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.

He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.