There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first.

Lawless are they that make their wills their law.

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.

Morality is a private and costly luxury.

Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind looks at what happens.

I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.

Who is richer? The man who is seen, but cannot see? Or the man who is not being seen, but can see?

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

You are doomed to make choices. This is life’s greatest paradox.

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

I actually feel like women in my position, when we have all at our disposal to help us, shouldn’t complain when we consider all of the people who are really struggling and don’t have the means or support. Many people are single, raising children. That’s hard.

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

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Thought must be divided against itself before it can come to any knowledge of itself.

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.

If you understand the universe, you control it, in a way.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

One who is too insistent on his own views, finds few to agree with him.

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

Morality arose largely as an empirical defence of the individual and society. Ever since intelligent beings began to be in contact, and consequently in friction, they have felt the need to guard themselves against each other’s encroachments.

It takes no more time to see the good side of life than it takes to see the bad.

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

The book, ’12 Rules For Life,‘ is a very serious book. There’s elements of humor in it, but I’m trying to struggle with things at the deepest possible level and to explain to people why it’s necessary to live a upstanding and noble and moral and truthful and responsible life, and why there’s hell to pay if you don’t do that.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

I was never ignorant, as far as being experienced in classrooms and learning about different subjects and actually soaking it up, so I checked into college for a little bit. I took classes at a community college in West L.A. I took psychology, English, and philosophy.

People see things differently and remember things differently. It’s why if somebody robs a liquor store and there are four witnesses they’ll often disagree.

Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.

We must conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members.

This soul, or life within us, by no means agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people say.

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.

The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.

The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

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.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

I love to go to the zoo. But not on Sunday. I don’t like to see the people making fun of the animals, when it should be the other way around.

The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.

Let me give you a definition of ethics: It is good to maintain and further life it is bad to damage and destroy life.

Sometimes we look at gay being a bigger sin than being proud or not telling the truth. I don’t think God categorizes sins.

I think God gives every one of us our own will, and unfortunately, some people choose to do evil things with it.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.

There is no such thing as bad weather, only different kinds of good weather.

There is no object so large but that at a great distance from the eye it does not appear smaller than a smaller object near.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

It makes a great deal of difference whether one wills not to sin or has not the knowledge to sin.

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

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.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

There is no such things as ‚best‘ in the world of individuals.