There are no eternal facts, as there are no absolute truths.

A pessimist? That’s a person who has been intimately acquainted with an optimist.

There was a while when I was feeling like, ‚Damn, if I’d just been born black, I would not have to go through all this‘.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness… and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

As human beings, we are all not conducting just one narrative but many narratives all at the same time.

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

They consider me to have sharp and penetrating vision because I see them through the mesh of a sieve.

The world is a republic of mediocrities, and always was.

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

The lie is a condition of life.

A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.

What if nothing exists and we’re all in somebody’s dream?

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

People are not disturbed by things, but by the view they take of them.

Even with all of the things that are so awful, if you walk into your yard and stay there looking at almost anything for five minutes, you will be stunned by how marvelous life is and how incredibly lucky we are to have it.

All travel has its advantages. If the passenger visits better countries, he may learn to improve his own. And if fortune carries him to worse, he may learn to enjoy it.

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

Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.

You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

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

The label ‚liberal‘ or ‚conservative,‘ any – every time I hear that, I think of the great Gilbert and Sullivan song from ‚Iolanthe.‘ It goes, ‚Every gal and every boy that’s born alive is either a little liberal or else a little conservative.‘ What do those labels mean? It depends on whose ox is being gored.

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

There is no such thing as Something for nothing.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

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

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

So let’s be honest with ourselves and not take ourselves too serious, and never condemn the other fellow for doing what we are doing every day, only in a different way.

It was a favorite expression of Theophrastus that time was the most valuable thing that a man could spend.

Kids will remind you that, even though you’ve gone down a road 100 times, it’s brand new for them – and that’s healthy.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

A lot of people don’t like the road, but it’s as natural to me as breathing.

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.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

I was inspired to spend an entire year – my 65th year – reading, researching, and meditating on Lao-tzu’s messages, practicing them and ultimately writing down these insights as I felt Lao-tzu wanted us to know them.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

I was brought up differently than the average American child because the average child is brought up expecting to be happy.

All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.

You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.

I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long. I call it ‚Le Milieu Divin,‘ but I am being careful to include nothing esoteric and the minimum of explicit philosophy.

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.