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.

I always invest my own money in the companies that I create. I don’t believe in the whole thing of just using other people’s money. I don’t think that’s right. I’m not going to ask other people to invest in something if I’m not prepared to do so myself.

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.

I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

I’m an idealist without illusions.

There’s strong data that, within companies, the No. 1 reason for ethical violations is the pressure to meet expectations, sometimes unrealistic expectations.

The highest proof of the spirit is love. Love the eternal thing which can already on earth possess as it really is.

I do not believe in the God of theology who rewards good and punishes evil.

The unnatural, that too is natural.

He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

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

It is not the creation of wealth that is wrong, but the love of money for its own sake.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

Sacrifice, discipline and prayer are essential. We gain strength through God’s word. We receive grace from the sacrament. And when we fumble due to sin – and it’s gonna happen – confession puts us back on the field.

You will always be fond of me. I represent to you all the sins you have never had the courage to commit.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

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

Henry Kissinger should have the door shut in his face by every decent person and should be shamed, ostracized and excluded.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

Nature abhors annihilation.

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

Infinites, when considered absolutely without any restriction or limitation, are neither equal nor unequal, nor have any certain proportion one to another, and therefore, the principle that all infinites are equal is a precarious one.

To do a great right do a little wrong.

The man who has won millions at the cost of his conscience is a failure.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s ‚Pensees‘ and read, ‚I am the great silent spaces between worlds.‘

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

Such is the feebleness of humanity, such is its perversity, that doubtless it is better for it to be subject to all possible superstitions, as long as they are not murderous, than to live without religion.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

Fear is the mother of morality.

Treat those who are good with goodness, and also treat those who are not good with goodness. Thus goodness is attained. Be honest to those who are honest, and be also honest to those who are not honest. Thus honesty is attained.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any.

God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

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.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.

Change alone is unchanging.

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.

I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.

Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.

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.

You just have to have a simple faith.

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.

There’s no difference between one’s killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It’s exactly the same thing, or even worse.