The future influences the present just as much as the past.

States are not moral agents.

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

The free world must not prove itself worthy of its own past.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

What we live by we die by.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you’re just one more deluded Pollyanna.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

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

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

I make preparations both to live and to die every day, but with the emphasis on not dying, and on acting as if I was going to carry on living.

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

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.

Sin is geographical.

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.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

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.

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and establishing those properties by experiments, and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

For time and the world do not stand still. Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or the present are certain to miss the future.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

A revolution is a struggle to the death between the future and the past.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

Man is a universe within himself.

There are massive efforts on the part of the internet’s corporate owners to try to direct it to become a technique of marginalisation and control.

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

People who think you could wave a magic wand and the legacy of the past will be over are blind.

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

It is not possible for civilization to flow backwards while there is youth in the world. Youth may be headstrong, but it will advance it allotted length.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

If you want to influence people, you want them to accept your suggestions, you don’t say, ‚You don’t know how to use the English language,‘ or ‚How could you make that argument?‘ It will be welcomed much more if you have a gentle touch than if you are aggressive.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

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

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks he becomes.

I desire no future that will break the ties with the past.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

I don’t think that the total creation took place in six days as we now measure time. If we can confirm, say, the Big Bang theory, that doesn’t at all cause me to question my faith that God created the Big Bang.

People respond when you tell them there is a great future in front of you, you can leave your past behind.

I don’t think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.

Where does discontent start? You are warm enough, but you shiver. You are fed, yet hunger gnaws you. You have been loved, but your yearning wanders in new fields. And to prod all these there’s time, the Bastard Time.

It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.

Will minus intellect constitutes vulgarity.

This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.