The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.

No man is free who is not master of himself.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

I feel much freer now that I am certain the pope is the Antichrist.

How can one preach goodness and love to men without at the same time offering them an interpretation of the World that justifies this goodness and this love?

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

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued – they may be essential to survival.

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

There is no wealth but life.

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

Man, so long as he remains free, has no more constant and agonizing anxiety than find as quickly as possible someone to worship.

Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?

He only earns his freedom and his life Who takes them every day by storm.

Non-violence is the article of faith.

Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

You may say, ‚Well, dragons don’t exist.‘ It’s, like, yes they do – the category ‚predator‘ and the category ‚dragon‘ are the same category. It absolutely exists. It’s a superordinate category. It exists absolutely more than anything else. In fact, it really exists.

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

This is the highest wisdom that I own; freedom and life are earned by those alone who conquer them each day anew.

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.

I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.

History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the timid.

Contention existed before the earth was formed.

A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

I am the freest author in the world.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.

At the end of the day, the TV show is the best job in the world. I get to go anywhere I want, eat and drink whatever I want. As long as I just babble at the camera, other people will pay for it. It’s a gift.

Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

Never, never and never again shall it be that this beautiful land will again experience the oppression of one by another.

Freedom is not procured by a full enjoyment of what is desired, but by controlling the desire.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

We are not to give credit to the many, who say that none ought to be educated but the free; but rather to the philosophers, who say that the well-educated alone are free.

Freedom conceives that the mind and spirit of man can be free only if he be free to pattern his own life, to develop his own talents, free to earn, to spend, to save, to acquire property as the security of his old age and his family.

Liberty doesn’t work as well in practice as it does in speeches.

I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any.

No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

A man’s character is his guardian divinity.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

So thoroughly and sincerely are we compelled to live, reverencing our life, and denying the possibility of change. This is the only way, we say; but there are as many ways as there can be drawn radii from one centre. All change is a miracle to contemplate; but it is a miracle which is taking place every instant.

Every country must be absolutely free to adopt the type of economic, political and social system that it considers convenient.

The reason why I am proud of my part in the punk movement is that I think it really did implant a message that was already there. The hippies told it to me, but punk made it something cool for people to stand up for, which is that we do not believe government, that we are against government.

I believe in believing. My coach John Kavanagh is a big atheist, and he is always trying to persuade people to his way of thinking, and I think, ‚What a waste of energy.‘ If people want to believe in this god or that god, that’s fine by me; believe away. But I think we can be our own gods. I believe in myself.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!