Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we’re really talking about peace.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.

The divisions of Perspective are 3, as used in drawing; of these, the first includes the diminution in size of opaque objects; the second treats of the diminution and loss of outline in such opaque objects; the third, of the diminution and loss of colour at long distances.

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

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

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

‚Tis better to bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.

Everything is clearer when you’re in love.

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

The world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

I think it’s a very good thing to leave your country and look at it from afar.

On the outskirts of every agony sits some observant fellow who points.

I’ve been called a moron since I was about four. My father called me a moron. My grandfather said I was a moron. And a lot of times when I’m driving, I hear I’m a moron. I like being a moron.

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

Nature is not human hearted.

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

I’ll die a crazy old man!

The way people look at me these days – that’s the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who’ve attained a certain position are human.

The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.

Who would set a limit to the mind of man? Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

This isn’t life in the fast lane, it’s life in the oncoming traffic.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

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.

No matter how dull, or how mean, or how wise a man is, he feels that happiness is his indisputable right.

The eye sees what it brings the power to see.

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

I believe that one key to success is to accept truth, no matter how it’s spoken.

The outer passes away; the innermost is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There’s no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

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

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

We are moving towards a world that is reordering itself and that may appear more ordered at some periods of time, but I see no sign that we are moving towards a world order in my definition of it – namely, a system which is accepted, which is internalized by the majority of the key participants.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

It does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God.

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

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

There are two things a person should never be angry at, what they can help, and what they cannot.

A jug fills drop by drop.

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

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

What we live by we die by.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge? We shouldn’t marginalise people for this. They must be integrated into society.

In the course of history, men come to see that iron necessity is neither iron nor necessary.

No obligation to do the impossible is binding.

Knowledge is true opinion.

No man was ever wise by chance.

In the affairs of this world, men are saved not by faith, but by the want of it.

Nature will bear the closest inspection. She invites us to lay our eye level with her smallest leaf, and take an insect view of its plain.