There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

The formula ‚Two and two make five‘ is not without its attractions.

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

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

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

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

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

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

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.

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

Some animals are cunning and evil-disposed, as the fox; others, as the dog, are fierce, friendly, and fawning. Some are gentle and easily tamed, as the elephant; some are susceptible of shame, and watchful, as the goose. Some are jealous and fond of ornament, as the peacock.

The truth is lived, not taught.

Reason is the enemy of faith.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

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

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

All men are equal before fish.

Ordinary morality is innate in my view.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

When one has the feeling of dislike for evil, when one feels tranquil, one finds pleasure in listening to good teachings; when one has these feelings and appreciates them, one is free of fear.

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

It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment’s grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one’s life.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

Abortion isn’t a lesser evil, it’s a crime. Taking one life to save another, that’s what the Mafia does. It’s a crime. It’s an absolute evil.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

I can’t explain 9/11, except the evil of man.

Peace is liberty in tranquillity.

History should be written as philosophy.

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

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

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

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

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

You are the universe, you aren’t in the universe.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

No man is justified in doing evil on the ground of expedience.

Man is a universe within himself.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

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

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

The natural desire of good men is knowledge.

The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It’s a battle you can’t hope to win – it’s a battle that’s going to go on forever. It’s part of the human condition.

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

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

Falsehood is a perennial spring.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.