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

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

Seemingly, man has learned to live without God, preoccupied and indifferent toward Him and concerned only about material security and pleasure.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.

Reason is the enemy of faith.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

Regardless of what society says, we can’t go on much longer in the sea of immorality without judgment coming.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

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

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

The human animal cannot be trusted for anything good except en masse. The combined thought and action of the whole people of any race, creed or nationality, will always point in the right direction.

The universe is not indifferent to our existence – it depends on it.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

Everybody’s got that split between the beautiful and fragile, the hard and the dark.

No cause justifies the deaths of innocent people.

It is not good to be too free. It is not good to have everything one wants.

But while they prate of economic laws, men and women are starving. We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature. They are made by human beings.

The moral disapprobation of society has an impact on behavior in societies.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

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

I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfil our destiny, but our fate is sealed.

There are people who can do all fine and heroic things but one – keep from telling their happiness to the unhappy.

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

I like to talk about my obsession with french fries because I don’t want people to think that ‚Let’s Move‘ is about complete, utter deprivation. It’s about moderation and real-life changes and ideas that really work for families.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

It was a Greek tragedy. Nixon was fulfilling his own nature. Once it started it could not end otherwise.

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

The greatest destroyer of peace is abortion because if a mother can kill her own child, what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me? There is nothing between.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

Words are loaded pistols.

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.

There is no wealth but life.

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

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

The best things and best people rise out of their separateness; I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.

People have discovered that they can fool the devil; but they can’t fool the neighbors.

You see, I am trying in all my stories to get the feeling of the actual life across – not to just depict life – or criticize it – but to actually make it alive. So that when you have read something by me, you actually experience the thing. You can’t do this without putting in the bad and the ugly as well as what is beautiful.

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power. And concentration of political power gives rise to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle.

If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?

Every man is a creative cause of what happens, a primum mobile with an original movement.

It’s human nature to not say everything that’s on your mind at the time you think it. Because we fear saying something that people will laugh at, people will think is dumb. We’re afraid of being embarrassed.

I have talked with great men, and I do not see how they differ from others.

I think the materialist conception of history is valid.

One can be instructed in society, one is inspired only in solitude.

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.

What’s the good of drawing in the next breath if all you do is let it out and draw in another?

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.