The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

Heaven is long-enduring, and earth continues long. The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure and continue thus long is because they do not live of, or for, themselves.

Men must be taught as if you taught them not, and things unknown proposed as things forgot.

You live and learn. At any rate, you live.

A good name is rather to be chosen than riches.

All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

Experience teaches only the teachable.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

But the relationship of morality and power is a very subtle one. Because ultimately power without morality is no longer power.

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.

We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.

The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking at things.

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? 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.

In my line of work, the enemy gets a vote.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

That is never too often repeated, which is never sufficiently learned.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

I make decisions all day, so it’s nice for a woman like me to go to dinner and have the man take the menu and say, ‚Let me order.‘ Other women would be offended by that, but I’m like, ‚Good. Because I can’t make one more decision today.‘ I want someone to rub my feet without being asked.

The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too.

I act on impulse and I go with my instincts.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

‚Suffering should not make us bitter people,‘ my mother once said, ‚it should make us better comforters.‘ Young people need to hear this from those who have walked before them, because someday they’ll be walking those same steps, but there may not be anyone following behind.

I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

Sadly, of course, there is real evil in the world. You watch the news, and you see all of the people suffering and so much cruelty.

I have wondered about time all my life.

We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from… Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

You can’t have a value structure without a hierarchy. They’re the same thing because a value structure means one thing takes precedence over another.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

At the end of the day, when it comes time to make that decision, as president, all you have to guide you are your values, and your vision, and the life experiences that make you who you are.

If I get stuck, I look at a book that tells me how someone else did it. I turn the pages, and then I say, ‚Oh, I forgot that bit,‘ then close the book and carry on. Finally, after you’ve figured out how to do it, you read how they did it and find out how dumb your solution is and how much more clever and efficient theirs is!

Sometimes the majority just means all the fools are on the same side.

I’ve got a pen and I’ve got a phone – and I can use that pen to sign executive orders and take executive actions and administrative actions that move the ball forward.

To see what is right and not to do it is want of courage, or of principle.

Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?

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.

Even death is not to be feared by one who has lived wisely.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

Live to learn, and you will really learn to live.

All my life, whenever it comes time to make a decision, I make it and forget about it.

Stay hungry, stay foolish.

If anyone offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see by what stipulation anything certain can be determined in any science, since one or another set of hypotheses may always be devised which will appear to supply new difficulties.

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

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

Never marry someone in hope that they’ll change later.

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.