The proper study of Mankind is Man.

We continue to shape our personality all our life. If we knew ourselves perfectly, we should die.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

When you love and accept yourself, when you know who really cares about you, and when you learn from your mistakes, then you stop caring about what people who don’t know you think.

Never be lucid, never state, if you would be regarded great.

I think that God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.

A man’s felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

I want everybody to understand that I am an American Negro first before I am a member of any political party.

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

A man is never more truthful than when he acknowledges himself a liar.

Had I been a great athlete, I’m not sure I would have even gone into coaching. I may have turned out feeling that my life ended when my athletic career ended, as happens so many times with various athletes.

I think the healthy way to live is to make friends with the beast inside oneself, and that means not the beast but the shadow. The dark side of one’s nature. Have fun with it and you know, is to accept everything about ourselves.

We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.

Age is whatever you think it is. You are as old as you think you are.

I happen to believe there is evil in the world.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.

He that does good to another does good also to himself.

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

As you get older, the questions come down to about two or three. How long? And what do I do with the time I’ve got left?

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.

In retrospect, I can see I couldn’t talk to people face to face, so I got on stage and started screaming and squealing and twitching about. Ha! Like, that sure made sense!

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

The brain is wider than the sky.

The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.

We can, for example, be fairly confident that either there will be a world without war or there won’t be a world – at least, a world inhabited by creatures other than bacteria and beetles, with some scattering of others.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

Beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

The return of my birthday, if I remember it, fills me with thoughts which it seems to be the general care of humanity to escape.

Man’s greatness lies in his power of thought.

The history of mankind is the instant between two strides taken by a traveler.

I have the habit of attention to such excess, that my senses get no rest – but suffer from a constant strain.

People who say they don’t care what people think are usually desperate to have people think they don’t care what people think.

My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.

Remember, it is not about voting for the perfect candidate – there is no such thing. Presidents are human.

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

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

No such thing as a man willing to be honest – that would be like a blind man willing to see.

Opposite to godliness is atheism in profession, and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind, that it never had many professors.

I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life. My way of dealing with frustration is to shut down and to think and speak logically.

A man is great by deeds, not by birth.

People who boast about their I.Q. are losers.

It’s only I have seen enough of it and the funny thing is now, I know that I’m skinny, because I know there are even smaller clothes in the store. I think I’m big, when I was big, I never thought about it.

We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.

We are all at times unconscious prophets.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

I think and that is all that I am.

Silence is a source of great strength.

We have to confront ourselves. Do we like what we see in the mirror? And, according to our light, according to our understanding, according to our courage, we will have to say yea or nay – and rise!

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

I don’t consider myself to be that credulous.

We human beings are strange creatures and still reserve the right to think for ourselves.