There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

I believe in believing. My coach John Kavanagh is a big atheist, and he is always trying to persuade people to his way of thinking, and I think, ‚What a waste of energy.‘ If people want to believe in this god or that god, that’s fine by me; believe away. But I think we can be our own gods. I believe in myself.

One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

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?

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

‚Tis strange what a man may do, and a woman yet think him an angel.

He who gives away shall have real gain. He who subdues himself shall be free; he shall cease to be a slave of passions. The righteous man casts off evil, and by rooting out lust, bitterness, and illusion do we reach Nirvana.

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

That deep emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

We think that the world is a solid, vivid place, full of shape and colour and solid objects like this table and this microphone and so on, but we actually create that in our heads out of the bits of information that hit the back of our eyeballs or hit our eardrums or hit our tongues or whatever.

Can the mind see the truth of its own incapacity to know the unknown? Surely if I see very clearly that my mind cannot know the unknown, there is absolute quietness.

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.

Theology is unnecessary.

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

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.

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.

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

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

What people see on court is another side of me; it’s not me.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

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

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

The thing about delirium is you think it’s great, but it actually isn’t.

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

I was bold in the pursuit of knowledge, never fearing to follow truth and reason to whatever results they led, and bearding every authority which stood in their way.

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

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

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.

Absence and death are the same – only that in death there is no suffering.

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge – that is everywhere.

The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

There is nothing permanent except change.

I am not ashamed to confess that I am ignorant of what I do not know.

The vulgar man is always the most distinguished, for the very desire to be distinguished is vulgar.

Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

From wonder into wonder existence opens.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.