The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

Life is a difficult game. You can win it only by retaining your birthright to be a person.

Since God created the world, He also created reality.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

Among the many values in life, I appreciate freedom most.

And yet it moves.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

Bread without flesh is a good diet, as on many botanical excursions I have proved. Tea also may easily be ignored. Just bread and water and delightful toil is all I need – not unreasonably much, yet one ought to be trained and tempered to enjoy life in these brave wilds in full independence of any particular kind of nourishment.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

Wise leaders generally have wise counselors because it takes a wise person themselves to distinguish them.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

Lord keep us all from sin. Teach us how to walk circumspectly; enable us to guard our minds against error of doctrine, our hearts against wrong feelings, and our lives against evil actions.

Error is always more busy than truth.

The drama and the trauma of the relationship you have when you’re 16 can mirror the one you have when you’re 26. Life repeats itself.

Life is a constant oscillation between the sharp horns of dilemmas.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

To read without reflecting is like eating without digesting.

To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.

The power of intuitive understanding will protect you from harm until the end of your days.

Trust is the glue of life. It’s the most essential ingredient in effective communication. It’s the foundational principle that holds all relationships.

The more I see the less I know for sure.

No one can outrun death. It will catch up to all of us eventually.

It put our energies to sleep and made visionaries of us – dreamers and indolent… It is good to begin life poor; it is good to begin life rich – these are wholesome; but to begin it prospectively rich! The man who has not experienced it cannot imagine the curse of it.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

Let’s just be smart this time. I’m looking for smart.

We are born, so to speak, twice over; born into existence, and born into life; born a human being, and born a man.

I’m too busy acting like I’m not Naive. I’ve seen it all, I was here first.

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

Mothers are fonder than fathers of their children because they are more certain they are their own.

The only time you really live fully is from thirty to sixty. The young are slaves to dreams; the old servants of regrets. Only the middle-aged have all their five senses in the keeping of their wits.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell.

I don’t see myself as a philosopher. That’s awfully boring.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

Where a man can live, he can also live well.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

Life is not a spectator sport. If you’re going to spend your whole life in the grandstand just watching what goes on, in my opinion you’re wasting your life.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Art is parasitic on life, just as criticism is parasitic on art.

I still derive immense pleasure from remembering how many hod-carrying brickies were encouraged to put on lurex tights and mince up and down the high street, having been assured by know-it-alls like me that a smidgen of blusher really attracted the birds.

Forty is the old age of youth, fifty is the youth of old age.

Intuition and concepts constitute… the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

I’ve done a lot of things I’m not proud of, such as getting my girlfriend pregnant when I was 23 and the way I handled that.

We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life. Life is brief, and then you die, you know? So this is what we’ve chosen to do with our life.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

You have to be practical. So every time I say, if you want to write a novel you have to be practical, people get bored. They are disappointed. They are expecting a more dynamic, creative, artistic thing to say. What I want to say is: you have to be practical.

He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.

Religion was instituted to make us happy in this life and in the other. What must we do to be happy in the life to come? Be just.

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

To be a successful father… there’s one absolute rule: when you have a kid, don’t look at it for the first two years.

I think that there is never an indispensable leader, you know? I think that there is a time with dignity that one needs to leave.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.