Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

Let us be moral. Let us contemplate existence.

If somebody thinks they’re a hedgehog, presumably you just give ‚em a mirror and a few pictures of hedgehogs and tell them to sort it out for themselves.

It is better, of course, to know useless things than to know nothing.

Jesters do often prove prophets.

Wisdom does not show itself so much in precept as in life – in firmness of mind and a mastery of appetite. It teaches us to do as well as to talk; and to make our words and actions all of a color.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

The fox has many tricks. The hedgehog has but one. But that is the best of all.

Sometimes it is better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

You know, my Grandpop Finnegan used to have an expression: he used to say, ‚Joey, the guy in Olyphant’s out of work, it’s an economic slowdown. When your brother-in-law’s out of work, it’s a recession. When you’re out of work, it’s a depression.‘

Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.

The drama and the trauma of the relationship you have when you’re 16 can mirror the one you have when you’re 26. Life repeats itself.

My philosophy in life is, Decide what you want to do. You have to have something to hope for.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

I’m sure I’ve changed my mind about something. Inevitably, when we grow up – as we get more experience and wiser. Well, I’ve changed my mind about some food that I didn’t like when I was young.

Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.

That’s the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God – so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true… Hell, don’t pose me that one.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.

In action a great heart is the chief qualification. In work, a great head.

The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.

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

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.

Let your religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair.

I am rather inclined to silence.

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.

All generalizations are false, including this one.

Getting old is a fascination thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.

Through my films I’m eventually trying to one day tell the truth. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get there, but I’m slowly letting pieces of myself out there and then maybe by the time I’m 85, I’ll look back and say, ‚All right, that about sums it up.‘

Never go to excess, but let moderation be your guide.

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

Reason commands us far more imperiously than a master; for in disobeying the one we are unfortunate, and in disobeying the other we are fools.

Man consists of two parts, his mind and his body, only the body has more fun.

When we talk about mortality, we are talking about our children.

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.

It is not well to make great changes in old age.

We are an impossibility in an impossible universe.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

How could man rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of men?

Many foxes grow gray but few grow good.

Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.

He who hath many friends hath none.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.

Non-violence is the article of faith.

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.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.

The truest wisdom is a resolute determination.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.