The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

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

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal.

You need to understand what works best for your own body.

Our brains are either our greatest assets or our greatest liabilities.

Nothing can be divided into more parts than it can possibly be constituted of. But matter (i.e. finite) cannot be constituted of infinite parts.

In ‚Gran Torino,‘ I play a guy who’s racially offensive. But he learned. It shows that you’re never too old to learn and embrace people that you don’t understand to begin with. It seems like nobody else got that message, I guess.

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.

He who seeks does not find, but he who does not seek will be found.

You always have to remember that if you say something negative, it’s going to come back to haunt you.

Some men never feel small, but these are the few men who are.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

I’m fascinated by the fact that we can’t grasp anything about time.

Silence is a source of great strength.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.

Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. To know is not to be wise. Many men know a great deal, and are all the greater fools for it. There is no fool so great a fool as a knowing fool. But to know how to use knowledge is to have wisdom.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

A failure is a man who has blundered, but is not able to cash in the experience.

I do not believe in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

I wonder how many decisions we make every day. I believe it’s probably hundreds. We decide whether or not to get out of bed, what we’ll eat, what we’ll do, what we’ll think about, what we’ll say… and on and on.

Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.

Knowledge is love and light and vision.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

Your body has space within you that cannot die.

Common Core is a big win for education.

Is there anyone so wise as to learn by the experience of others?

When your higher self is present, it always promotes peace.

Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.

Being a full human being is difficult, frightening, and problematical.

No, I’m not a French designer either. I’m from nowhere. I’m a European, old European is all I am.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space where we choose our response.

You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.

Somehow, we have come to the erroneous belief that we are all but flesh, blood, and bones, and that’s all. So we direct our values to material things.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish – too much handling will spoil it.

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.

My company survives because I’ve learned to respect the ideas of people younger than me and recognize when my wisdom is obsolete.

Whatever is well said by another, is mine.

George Washington, as a boy, was ignorant of the commonest accomplishments of youth. He could not even lie.

You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.

Most people wouldn’t know music if it came up and bit them on the ass.

A man can’t be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

Electrical science has revealed to us the true nature of light, has provided us with innumerable appliances and instruments of precision, and has thereby vastly added to the exactness of our knowledge.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

It is impossible to underrate human intelligence – beginning with one’s own.

There is no sin except stupidity.

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

To remain a credible leader, I must always work first, hardest, and longest on changing myself. This is neither easy nor natural, but it is essential.

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.

As we must account for every idle word, so must we account for every idle silence.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.