The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

I’m not in it for fame. I’ve been famous in the streets already.

Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can’t expect an angel to look out.

Sometimes the majority just means all the fools are on the same side.

Life is warfare.

People can try to reinvent themselves. I don’t think you can really change who you are, though, because who you are is pretty much where you came from and what you’ve done up to now.

I guess I’m living in the present more than the past.

There are some Christian people who taste and see and enjoy religion in their own souls, and who get at a deeper knowledge of it than books can ever give them, though they should search all their days.

As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do.

Governing a great nation is like cooking a small fish – too much handling will spoil it.

Part of me suspects that I’m a loser, and the other part of me thinks I’m God Almighty.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

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

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

Beware of no man more than of yourself; we carry our worst enemies within us.

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

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

I’m not a god – I do bad things.

Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare – something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state – something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

Don’t swap horses in crossing a stream.

Where a man can live, he can also live well.

Youth is wasted on the young.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

It’s the philosophies of being an athlete that carry me today.

As a blind man has no idea of colors, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.

Lord keep us all from sin. Teach us how to walk circumspectly; enable us to guard our minds against error of doctrine, our hearts against wrong feelings, and our lives against evil actions.

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

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

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water’s edge.

Entire ignorance is not so terrible or extreme an evil, and is far from being the greatest of all; too much cleverness and too much learning, accompanied with ill bringing-up, are far more fatal.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

Nobody can hurt me without my permission.

So confident am I in the intentions, as well as wisdom, of the government, that I shall always be satisfied that what is not done, either cannot, or ought not to be done.

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.

If you know me, and you call me Stefani, you don’t really know me at all.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.

There is nothing which can better deserve your patronage, than the promotion of science and literature. Knowledge is in every country the surest basis of public happiness.

Today I love myself as I love my god: who could charge me with a sin today? I know only sins against my god; but who knows my god?

Well, I don’t think there’s any need for people to focus on my career.

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

It takes a wise man to discover a wise man.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

Do not think of your faults, still less of other’s faults; look for what is good and strong, and try to imitate it. Your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes.

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey’s end.

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

I know nothing, except the fact of my ignorance.

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

Actors know what actors are insecure about – and they’re all insecure.