The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending!

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

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

If you can feel that Mother Earth is in you, and you are Mother Earth, then you are not any longer afraid to die because the earth is not dying. Like a wave appears and disappears and appears again.

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.

The greatest delight which the fields and woods minister is the suggestion of an occult relation.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

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.

I don’t like to commit myself about heaven and hell – you see, I have friends in both places.

There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.

How terribly downright must be the utterances of storms and earthquakes to those accustomed to the soft hypocrisies of society.

Speak the truth, and all things alive or brute are vouchers, and the very roots of the grass underground there, do seem to stir and move to bear you witness.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

A sense of the universe, a sense of the all, the nostalgia which seizes us when confronted by nature, beauty, music – these seem to be an expectation and awareness of a Great Presence.

There is a specter haunting Europe, the specter of Communism.

Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.

Israelis would mostly breathe a sigh of relief if Palestinians were to disappear.

What springs from earth dissolves to earth again, and heaven-born things fly to their native seat.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

Man is by nature a political animal.

Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

The Tao teaches us not to intervene and interfere. The things we love we have to learn to leave alone. And the people we love we have to learn to let them be.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it’s my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.

It is as necessary for man to live in beauty rather than ugliness as it is necessary for him to have food for an aching belly or rest for a weary body.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

In my country of South Africa, we struggled for years against the evil system of apartheid that divided human beings, children of the same God, by racial classification and then denied many of them fundamental human rights.

Life is wasted on the living.

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

The superior man does not, even for the space of a single meal, act contrary to virtue. In moments of haste, he cleaves to it. In seasons of danger, he cleaves to it.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

Information is not knowledge.

All men’s souls are immortal, but the souls of the righteous are immortal and divine.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

Religion and philosophy are to be preserved distinct. We are not to introduce divine revelations into philosophy, nor philosophical opinions into religion.

The wise man does not expose himself needlessly to danger, since there are few things for which he cares sufficiently; but he is willing, in great crises, to give even his life – knowing that under certain conditions it is not worthwhile to live.

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

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

The land created me. I’m wild and lonesome. Even as I travel the cities, I’m more at home in the vacant lots.

Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.

Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to git attention we do, except walk?

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now – always.

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, – till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

My philosophy is, it’s always very rewarding when you can make an audience laugh. I don’t mind making fun of myself. I like self-deprecating comedy. But I’d like you to laugh with me occasionally, too.

I have nothing to ask but that you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give.