There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

The first step, my son, which one makes in the world, is the one on which depends the rest of our days.

If you can’t convince them, confuse them.

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.

In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those contracted by the body.

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.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee.

Man – a being in search of meaning.

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

I don’t suffer of anything that I’ve lost.

The ‚I think‘ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‚I breathe‘ which actually does accompany them.

In my opinion, there is no aspect of reality beyond the reach of the human mind.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

Forever is composed of nows.

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.

Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker.

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

Marriage is a wonderful institution, but who would want to live in an institution?

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

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

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

I never think of the future – it comes soon enough.

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.

It ain’t those parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me, it is the parts that I do understand.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

I read Plato’s ‚Republic.‘ I read it through about five times until I could actually understand it.

Thinking fragments reality – it cuts it up into conceptual bits and pieces.

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

A lie cannot live.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.