The Hindu religions gave me the impression of a vast well into which one plunges in order to grasp the reflection of the sun.

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

Seemingly, man has learned to live without God, preoccupied and indifferent toward Him and concerned only about material security and pleasure.

Obviously I faced the possibility of not returning when first I considered going. Once faced and settled there really wasn’t any good reason to refer to it.

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

I was being trained because I wanted to be a preacher like my father. I wanted to talk about Moses; I wanted to talk about God… I wanted to talk about the apostles, the disciples and all that.

When it is a question of money, everybody is of the same religion.

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider god-fearing and pious. On the other hand, they do less easily move against him, believing that he has the gods on his side.

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

Shall I tell you what the real evil is? To cringe to the things that are called evils, to surrender to them our freedom, in defiance of which we ought to face any suffering.

In the long-run every Government is the exact symbol of its People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; we have to say, Like People like Government.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

We moralize among ruins.

There are many, many Christians who practice Buddhism, and they become better and better Christians all the time.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

It takes a long time to bring the past up to the present.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

I didn’t want to submit to the army and then, on the day of judgment, have God say to me, ‚Why did you do that?‘ This life is a trial, and you realize that what you do is going to be written down for Judgment Day.

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‚Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?‘ We must always consider the person.

I don’t think a Jewish or Christian or Islamic state is a proper concept. I would object to the United States as a Christian state.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

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.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

Our moments of inspiration are not lost though we have no particular poem to show for them; for those experiences have left an indelible impression, and we are ever and anon reminded of them.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childhood days, recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth, and transport the traveler back to his own fireside and quiet home!

All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a homogeneous representation of the universe. We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.

It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a man’s life is made up of nothing, but the habits he has accumulated during the first half.

My mother was Catholic, my father was Protestant. There was always a debate going on at home – I think in those days we called them arguments – about who was right and who was wrong.

Modern science says: ‚The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.‘ From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

We must not reduce the bosom of the universal church to a nest protecting our mediocrity.

When I think over what I have said, I envy dumb people.

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

Every child that isn’t born, but is unjustly condemned to be aborted, has the face of Jesus Christ, has the face of the Lord.

When all is said and done, more is said than done.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s freedom after it.

The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe with blood for centuries.

When death, the great reconciler, has come, it is never our tenderness that we repent of, but our severity.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

There was never yet fair woman but she made mouths in a glass.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

To walk through the ruined cities of Germany is to feel an actual doubt about the continuity of civilization.

Sometimes we look back and 10 years from now we think, ‚Boy, those were great old days.‘ Well, you know, we’re living in the good old days.

I don’t dislike any of my exes. If I took time to form a relationship, it’s gonna hurt when we move on, but are you puttin‘ White-Out over all that beautiful time together? That was real time in your life. It’s connected to where you are today.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.

I believe that a government has only one religion – India first. A government has only one holy book – our Constitution. A government has only one kind of devotion – towards nation.

When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.