The truth is lived, not taught.

I’m an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call ‚the last illusion.‘ The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what’s going on but that the planets know what’s going on.

Everything that happens happens as it should, and if you observe carefully, you will find this to be so.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

Justice… is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed.

If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people – including me – would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.

But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.

Religions get lost as people do.

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

My philosophy is: It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me.

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so.

But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

Truth is a deep kindness that teaches us to be content in our everyday life and share with the people the same happiness.

Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.

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

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

I’m an idealist without illusions.

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.

I know that campaigns can seem small, and even silly. Trivial things become big distractions. Serious issues become sound bites. And the truth gets buried under an avalanche of money and advertising. If you’re sick of hearing me approve this message, believe me – so am I.

We should not look back unless it is to derive useful lessons from past errors, and for the purpose of profiting by dearly bought experience.

All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.

Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe.

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

The lessons from the peace process are clear; whatever life throws at us, our individual responses will be all the stronger for working together and sharing the load.

Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous.

Prison was the best thing that ever happened to me.

The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.

God, as Truth, has been for me a treasure beyond price. May He be so to every one of us.

At the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. On the cranky left, that is very annoying; I can see that.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

We have been so successful in the past century at the art of living longer and staying alive that we have forgotten how to die. Too often we learn the hard way. As soon as the baby boomers pass pensionable age, their lesson will be harsher still.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

Running taught me valuable lessons. In cross-country competition, training counted more than intrinsic ability, and I could compensate for a lack of natural aptitude with diligence and discipline. I applied this in everything I did.

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

My theory is 98 percent of all human endeavor is killing time.

Richard Nixon is a no good, lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and if he ever caught himself telling the truth, he’d lie just to keep his hand in.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

I happen to believe there is evil in the world.

We are like boxers, one never knows how much longer one has.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

Take care of all your memories. For you cannot relive them.

Coming generations will learn equality from poverty, and love from woes.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.