The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
George Bernard ShawA subtle thought that is in error may yet give rise to fruitful inquiry that can establish truths of great value.
Isaac AsimovTo assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.
Albert CamusReligion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.
Christopher HitchensThe essence of lying is in deception, not in words.
John RuskinIf I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.
Alexander the GreatDoubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.
VoltaireIt is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.
EpicurusEven in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.
C. S. LewisFanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.
Friedrich NietzscheThe Nihilistic Troll might pretend to be acting in the service of some cause or leader, but don’t be fooled. The cause and their supposedly strong convictions are simply a way to justify and provide cover for their abusive behavior.
Robert GreeneWe are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.
C. S. LewisMan will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.
Winston ChurchillThe foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.
BuddhaFear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.
Baruch SpinozaAs long as your body is healthy and under control and death is distant, try to save your soul; when death is immanent what can you do?
ChanakyaThe universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.
Bertrand RussellIt was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.
Henry KissingerWisdom 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.
Lucius Annaeus SenecaI do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
Isaac NewtonI was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.
Thomas JeffersonI went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Henry David ThoreauTruth is a pathless land.
Jiddu KrishnamurtiMy only fear is that I may live too long. This would be a subject of dread to me.
Thomas JeffersonWisdom begins in wonder.
SocratesThere is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge – that is everywhere.
Hermann HesseI am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.
SocratesNothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.
Baruch SpinozaThe history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.
William JamesTo do all that one is able to do, is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do, is to be a god.
Napoleon BonaparteHe who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.
Johann Wolfgang von GoetheIf you seek truth you will not seek victory by dishonorable means, and if you find truth you will become invincible.
EpictetusAll the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.
Abraham MaslowOne of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.
Franz KafkaI were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.
William ShakespeareThe true and the approximately true are apprehended by the same faculty; it may also be noted that men have a sufficient natural instinct for what is true, and usually do arrive at the truth. Hence the man who makes a good guess at truth is likely to make a good guess at probabilities.
AristotleFix 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.
Thomas JeffersonWe do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.
Richard M. NixonA gaffe in Washington is someone telling the truth, and telling the truth has never hurt me.
Joe BidenDying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.
Woody AllenThoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.
Immanuel KantWhat is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.
Friedrich NietzscheLive your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.
Immanuel KantThere must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.
PlatoSometimes I think we’re alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we’re not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.
Arthur C. ClarkeTruth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.
Thomas JeffersonThe sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.
Alexander HamiltonBlessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.
Baruch SpinozaI am a part of everything that I have read.
Theodore RooseveltIt is not true that people are naturally equal for no two people can be together for even a half an hour without one acquiring an evident superiority over the other.
Samuel JohnsonJustice is truth in action.
Benjamin DisraeliThe important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.
Joseph AddisonA lot of people are realizing they had the wool pulled over their eyes by Obama.
Clint EastwoodChaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.
Henry AdamsWe must conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members.
Marcus Tullius CiceroQuacks are a part of our culture, and we all fall prey to them. Who among us can say, for sure, that even our own personal physicians are honest and competent?
Hunter S. ThompsonAll mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.
Benjamin FranklinThe hidden harmony is better than the obvious.
HeraclitusError is always more busy than truth.
Hosea BallouThose who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.
Lao Tzu