There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

For, if a good speaker, never so eloquent, does not see into the fact, and is not speaking the truth of that – is there a more horrid kind of object in creation?

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself. The Way of Heaven does one good but never does one harm. The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

It pays to be obvious, especially if you have a reputation for subtlety.

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

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

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

I’m the first to admit this whole salary thing is getting out of control. In the final analysis, it’s still about the work.

Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.

I believe in the Golden Rule – The Man with the Gold… Rules.

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

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

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

The unnatural, that too is natural.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

An economist’s guess is liable to be as good as anybody else’s.

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

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

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

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

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

It is in the treatment of trifles that a person shows what they are.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live as if there isn’t and to die to find out that there is.

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

This is the truth: as from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again.

But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.

All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small.

Popular culture is a contradiction in terms. If it’s popular, it’s not culture.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.

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

If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

Only those are fit to live who are not afraid to die.

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

Nothing is so fatal to religion as indifference.

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

Every man is his own hell.

The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision.

You’ll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.

I am not a televangelist.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

No man was ever wise by chance.

Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Cunning… is but the low mimic of wisdom.

If you’re in business or politics, you need to have an intense understanding of what’s going on around you.

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