The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.

Religion is compulsory in English schools, you know.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

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

Governments are not representative. They have their own power, serving segments of the population that are dominant and rich.

Good men must not obey the laws too well.

We just seem to have lost all our morals and principles and values these days.

Most people are happy being average. Most are happy being faceless in a sea of faces.

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.

When you give, it comes back to you.

I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.

I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days governments had better get out of the way and let them have it.

Dissident intellectuals aren’t all beautiful.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

I always say that people should not rush to change religions. There is real value in finding the spiritual resources you need in your home religion.

A bookstore is one of the only pieces of evidence we have that people are still thinking.

Society has always to demand a little more from human beings than it will get in practice.

As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

There is no way to happiness – happiness is the way.

Democracy is when the indigent, and not the men of property, are the rulers.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

I don’t call myself a Buddhist. I’m a free spirit. I believe I’m here on earth to admire and enjoy it; that’s my religion.

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

Every formula of every religion has in this age of reason, to submit to the acid test of reason and universal assent.

I’ve run the Boston Marathon 6 times before. I think the best aspects of the marathon are the beautiful changes of the scenery along the route and the warmth of the people’s support. I feel happier every time I enter this marathon.

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

A man’s felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.

Doing what you love is the cornerstone of having abundance in your life.

Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.

Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that’s what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.

Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.

It’s not always been a happy marriage. I guess I wanted a quick fix.

It is perfectly possible to live a very moral life without a belief in God, and I think it’s perfectly possible to live a life peppered with ill-doing and believe in God.

I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.

Law is mind without reason.

Sincere Christians can disagree about the details of Scripture and theology – absolutely.

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.

I collect records. And cats. I don’t have any cats right now. But if I’m taking a walk and I see a cat, I’m happy.

It is impossible to reason without arriving at a Supreme Being.

The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.

The clearest way to show what the rule of law means to us in everyday life is to recall what has happened when there is no rule of law.

Happiness: a good bank account, a good cook, and a good digestion.

The class of citizens who provide at once their own food and their own raiment, may be viewed as the most truly independent and happy.

Religion which requires persecution to sustain, it is of the devil’s propagation.

The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.

The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

A laugh, to be joyous, must flow from a joyous heart, for without kindness, there can be no true joy.

There is nothing I fear more than waking up without a program that will help me bring a little happiness to those with no resources, those who are poor, illiterate, and ridden with terminal disease.

A woman’s heart must be of such a size and no larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed recipe.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

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.

My mother was a public school teacher in Virginia, and we didn’t have any money, we just survived on happiness, on being a happy family.

Happy is he who still loves something he loved in the nursery: He has not been broken in two by time; he is not two men, but one, and he has saved not only his soul but his life.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.