The lie is a condition of life.

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the same.

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

It’s human nature to gripe, but I’m going ahead and doing the best I can.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

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.

It is more shameful to distrust our friends than to be deceived by them.

I think being an atheist is something you are, not something you do.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

There is nothing permanent except change.

I 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.

To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

The story being told in ‚Star Wars‘ is a classic one. Every few hundred years, the story is retold because we have a tendency to do the same things over and over again. Power corrupts, and when you’re in charge, you start doing things that you think are right, but they’re actually not.

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

There is no such thing as Something for nothing.

To 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.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.

One isn’t necessarily born with courage, but one is born with potential. Without courage, we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

The real danger is not inaction. The real danger is when politicians and CEOs are making it look like action is happening when in fact nothing is being done.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

We pity in others only the those evils which we ourselves have experienced.

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

What if nothing exists and we’re all in somebody’s dream?

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

I’m interested in two things. I’m interested in truth and I’m interested in fairness.

We 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.

You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.

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.

You can fool all the people some of the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.