Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

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

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

When people meet me, they say that I’m really kind – contrary to a lot of my music.

Our judgments when we are pleased and friendly are not the same as when we are pained and hostile.

Everyone here has the sense that right now is one of those moments when we are influencing the future.

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.

When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.

I love to sit and eat quietly and enjoy each bite, aware of the presence of my community, aware of all the hard and loving work that has gone into my food.

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

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

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

Real happiness is cheap enough, yet how dearly we pay for its counterfeit.

I was seldom able to see an opportunity until it had ceased to be one.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

Depression runs in my family on both sides, and I have to be wary.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

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

Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt.

The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It’s a battle you can’t hope to win – it’s a battle that’s going to go on forever. It’s part of the human condition.

There’s no way to remove the observer – us – from our perceptions of the world.

People may hear your words, but they feel your attitude.

Sometimes I lose my temper.

Reality is a sliding door.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

I’m very, very serious – I’m serious enough not to take myself too seriously. That means I can be completely wedded to the moment. But when I leave that moment, I want to be completely wedded to the next moment.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

Execute every act of thy life as though it were thy last.

To find out your real opinion of someone, judge the impression you have when you first see a letter from them.

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

It is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

Nothing can come of nothing.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

Some people feel affronted when something they thought to be true doesn’t happen. If that’s the case, then your sense of risk is much higher, and that leads to risk aversion. You need to be able to be comfortable in uncertainty.

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

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

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

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

Every day is a gift from God. There’s no guarantee of tomorrow, so that tells me to see the good in this day to make the most of it.

The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

The ability to be in the present moment is a major component of mental wellness.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

I don’t think there is a single social issue I haven’t spoken on.

A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

Peace comes from within. Do not seek it without.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

The problem is that at a lot of big companies, process becomes a substitute for thinking. You’re encouraged to behave like a little gear in a complex machine. Frankly, it allows you to keep people who aren’t that smart, who aren’t that creative.