There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.

I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

My mum passing away wasn’t funny, but that funeral and what I went through, the things that happened, looking back at it, there were funny moments. You have to be strong enough to look back at it, to sit and assess the situation.

To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don’t be.

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

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.

I seated ugliness on my knee, and almost immediately grew tired of it.

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

What we need is a system of thought – you might even call it a religion – that can bind humans together. A system that would fit the Republic of Chad as well as the United States: a system that would supply our idealistic young people with something to believe in.

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

My heart aches for America and its deceived people.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

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

From the deepest desires often come the deadliest hate.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‚War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.‘

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

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.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

That we must all die, we always knew; I wish I had remembered it sooner.

The mind of the painter must resemble a mirror, which always takes the colour of the object it reflects and is completely occupied by the images of as many objects as are in front of it.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

My philosophy is, it’s always very rewarding when you can make an audience laugh. I don’t mind making fun of myself. I like self-deprecating comedy. But I’d like you to laugh with me occasionally, too.

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?

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

Any man is liable to err, only a fool persists in error.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

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

There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.

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

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from… Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

I was hit by a car once on my bike, but I still rode home.

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

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

I think 9/11 affected everybody in one way or another.

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

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.

We are not the sum of our possessions.