The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life’s wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

By the sole fact of his entering into ‚Thought,‘ man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion.

Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

If you grow up in a very strong religion like Catholicism you certainly cultivate in yourself a certain taste for the intensity of ideas.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

To be Catholic is the only way of being fully and utterly Christian.

Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.

One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.

To state the facts frankly is not to despair the future nor indict the past. The prudent heir takes careful inventory of his legacies and gives a faithful accounting to those whom he owes an obligation of trust.

Religion 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.

One Buddha is not enough; we need to have many Buddhas.

No law or ordinance is mightier than understanding.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.

I look forward to a great future for America – a future in which our country will match its military strength with our moral restraint, its wealth with our wisdom, its power with our purpose.

I separated from the Southern Baptists when they adopted the discriminatory attitude towards women, because I believe what Paul taught in Galatians that there is no distinction in God’s eyes between men and women, slaves and masters, Jews and non-Jews – everybody is created equally in the eyes of God.

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.

All the reasonings of men are not worth one sentiment of women.

I am a Catholic, not so committed to the church, but to the idea of the Virgin, the female face of God.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

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.

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

In a magazine, one can get – from cover to cover – 15 to 20 different ideas about life and how to live it.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

I love it when Muslims go to war with each other, as I do when the Christians do, because it shows there’s no such thing as the Christian world and the Islamic world. That’s all crap.

Time stays, we go.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

I’m too busy acting like I’m not Naive. I’ve seen it all, I was here first.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.

True knowledge exists in knowing that you know nothing.

Happiness is a mystery, like religion, and should never be rationalised.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

In this world filled with challenges, we do need help from time to time. Religion, eternal truth, and our missionaries are vital parts of that help.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

There is something terribly morbid in the modern sympathy with pain. One should sympathise with the colour, the beauty, the joy of life. The less said about life’s sores the better.

We should all start to live before we get too old.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

I’m fascinated by the fact that we can’t grasp anything about time.

We are braver and wiser because they existed, those strong women and strong men… We are who we are because they were who they were. It’s wise to know where you come from, who called your name.

Any man is liable to err, only a fool persists in error.

Sin is geographical.

Evil is whatever distracts.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.