The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

Sometimes we be playing the politics too much and forget who we are just to win.

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, – till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

I need to keep working on myself for a while.

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

As you get older, time speeds up but life slows down.

The man who complains about the way the ball bounces is likely the one who dropped it.

In the course of my life, I have often had to eat my words, and I must confess that I have always found it a wholesome diet.

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.

When it comes to our everyday habits, it’s important to ask: ‚Am I putting God first?‘

Religion and philosophy are to be preserved distinct. We are not to introduce divine revelations into philosophy, nor philosophical opinions into religion.

No one should be ashamed to admit he is wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday.

I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.

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

You’re not going to say anything about me that I’m not going to say about myself. There’s so many things that I think about myself; if someone really wanted to get at me, they could say this and this and this. So I’m going to say it before they can. It’s the best policy for me.

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

I don’t think I’m tangible to myself.

In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself – limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist.

It is important for you to know who you are and who you may become. It is more important than what you do, even as vital as your work is and will be.

It is most unwise for people in love to marry.

To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust.

Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

The next time someone tells you we can trim the budget by cutting aid, I hope you will ask whether it will come at the cost of more people dying.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

Test yourself on mankind. It is something that makes the doubter doubt, the believer believe.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

There are as many worlds as there are kinds of days, and as an opal changes its colors and its fire to match the nature of a day, so do I.

The experience of life consists of the experience which the spirit has of itself in matter and as matter, in mind and as mind, in emotion, as emotion, etc.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

Nothing can come of nothing.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

To be admitted to Nature’s hearth costs nothing. None is excluded, but excludes himself. You have only to push aside the curtain.

Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.

No one but a fool is always right.

Hell is other people.

Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it.

I’m an idealist without illusions.

I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.

I was very depressed when I was 19… I would go back to my apartment every day and I would just sit there. It was quiet and it was lonely. It was still. It was just my piano and myself. I had a television and I would leave it on all the time just to feel like somebody was hanging out with me.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

Adversity leads us to think properly of our state, and so is most beneficial to us.

It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

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

Philosophy begins in wonder.

Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Science is but an image of the truth.

When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

I am always wary of decisions made hastily. I am always wary of the first decision, that is, the first thing that comes to my mind if I have to make a decision. This is usually the wrong thing. I have to wait and assess, looking deep into myself, taking the necessary time.

The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.