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

Justice and power must be brought together, so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

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

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

My relationship to power and authority is that I’m all for it. People need somebody to watch over them. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

To be safe at the expense of the liberty of other people is a difficult equation.

In much of society, research means to investigate something you do not know or understand.

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

For a war to be just three conditions are necessary – public authority, just cause, right motive.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

And, after all, what is a lie? ‚Tis but the truth in a masquerade.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

Infinites, when considered absolutely without any restriction or limitation, are neither equal nor unequal, nor have any certain proportion one to another, and therefore, the principle that all infinites are equal is a precarious one.

Let’s pray that the human race never escapes from Earth to spread its iniquity elsewhere.

There are always people always asking you for something. But I feel like I have a foundation. I have a supporting cast where it doesn’t bother me too much.

By the sole fact of his entering into ‚Thought,‘ man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

So far is it from being true that men are naturally equal, that no two people can be half an hour together, but one shall acquire an evident superiority over the other.

Heaven is long-enduring, and earth continues long. The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure and continue thus long is because they do not live of, or for, themselves.

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

Fame is like caviar, you know – it’s good to have caviar but not when you have it at every meal.

While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.

Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.

Nothing can be divided into more parts than it can possibly be constituted of. But matter (i.e. finite) cannot be constituted of infinite parts.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

It is to the middle-class we must look for the safety of England.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

I am concerned about the whole man. I am concerned about what the people, using their government as an instrument and a tool, can do toward building the whole man, which will mean a better society and a better world.

If the people cannot trust their government to do the job for which it exists – to protect them and to promote their common welfare – all else is lost.

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

Laws control the lesser man… Right conduct controls the greater one.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

To say that authority, whether secular or religious, supplies no ground for morality is not to deny the obvious fact that it supplies a sanction.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

I don’t think that faith, whatever you’re being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained. And I don’t want to explain this whole life business through truth, science. There’s so much mystery. There’s so much awe.

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

The lessons of history would suggest that civilisations move in cycles. You can track that back quite far – the Babylonians, the Sumerians, followed by the Egyptians, the Romans, China. We’re obviously in a very upward cycle right now, and hopefully that remains the case. But it may not.

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

One of the powerful temptations is that of the cinema palace. The cinema has undoubtedly an enormous attraction for boys, and people are constantly cudgelling their brains how to stop it. But it is one of those things which would be very difficult to stop even if it were altogether desirable.

So far as I am concerned, I could not be accused of having set eyes, or having wished to set eyes, upon Darius‘ wife: on the contrary, I have refused even to listen to those who spoke to me of her beauty.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

My aim is to create a happy society with genuine friendship. Friendship between Tibetan and Chinese peoples is very essential.

A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.

Pull the string, and it will follow wherever you wish. Push it, and it will go nowhere at all.

Man is the only creature that refuses to be what he is.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

Philosophy is the highest music.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

My philosophy is simple: It’s a down-home, common, horse-sense approach to things.