There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

I believe in Coach Louis Wong. He is so much more than just a football coach.

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

The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out… without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

It may be, it just may be, that life as we know it with its humanity is more unique than many have thought.

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

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

A very large majority of the U.S. population is in favor of establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba and has been for a long time with some fluctuations. And even part of the business world is in favor of it, too. But the government won’t allow it.

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

The deed is everything, the glory is naught.

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

You cannot be in a position of power and destroy the life of another person.

What is ominous is the ease with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something to saying that the government should forbid it. When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

If there was an observer on Mars, they would probably be amazed that we have survived this long.

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

Where there is a free government, and the people make their own laws by their representatives, I see no injustice in their obliging one another to take their own paper money.

We must rekindle the fire of idealism in our society.

The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.

Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet.

You know, one of the things I think you understand as president is you’re held responsible for everything, but you don’t always have control of everything, right?

I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one’s temper and disturb one’s quiet.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.

To rule a country of a thousand chariots, there must be reverent attention to business, and sincerity; economy in expenditure, and love for men; and the employment of the people at the proper seasons.

The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.

Well, no one gives aid to Zimbabwe through the Mugabe government.

Look at our society. Everyone wants to be thin, but nobody wants to diet. Everyone wants to live long, but few will exercise. Everybody wants money, yet seldom will anyone budget or control their spending.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

Groups that rose from poverty to prosperity seldom did so by having their own racial or ethnic leaders to follow.

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.

Nothing strengthens authority so much as silence.

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

Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

I must follow the people. Am I not their leader?

Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.

We live in a world that has narrowed into a neighborhood before it has broadened into a brotherhood.

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

Long before history began we men have got together apart from the women and done things. We had time.

In too much of the West, everyone wants the guarantee of safety, and never having to make any decisions.

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

As president, I’m committed to making Washington work better and rebuilding the trust of the people who sent us here.

Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.

The Hindu religions gave me the impression of a vast well into which one plunges in order to grasp the reflection of the sun.

If we do not maintain justice, justice will not maintain us.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

It is the duty of the President to propose and it is the privilege of the Congress to dispose.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

Kings will be tyrants from policy, when subjects are rebels from principle.

To do a great right do a little wrong.

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

It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice tell me I ought to do.