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

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

There is no love of life without despair of life.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Reality is a sliding door.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist.

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

For me, my secularism is, India first. I say, the philosophy of my party is ‚Justice to all. Appeasement to none.‘ This is our secularism.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

I don’t see myself as a philosopher. That’s awfully boring.

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

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

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

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

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

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

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms – in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.

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.

Man’s greatness lies in his power of thought.

Nothing is enough for the man to whom enough is too little.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

There is no such thing as part freedom.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.

Society exists only as a mental concept; in the real world there are only individuals.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.

Forever is composed of nows.

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

What is earnest is not always true; on the contrary, error is often more earnest than truth.

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.

A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.