To be is to do.

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

Judges should avoid commenting on a candidate for public office.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s freedom after it.

There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

Seemingly, man has learned to live without God, preoccupied and indifferent toward Him and concerned only about material security and pleasure.

Man’s greatness lies in his power of thought.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

A jug fills drop by drop.

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.

If anyone offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see by what stipulation anything certain can be determined in any science, since one or another set of hypotheses may always be devised which will appear to supply new difficulties.

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

Success consecrates the most offensive crimes.

It is best to rise from life as from a banquet, neither thirsty nor drunken.

I have always considered it as treason against the great republic of human nature, to make any man’s virtues the means of deceiving him.

What goes up must come down.

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

Integrity has no need of rules.

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

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

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

Many people genuinely do not want to be saints, and it is probable that some who achieve or aspire to sainthood have never felt much temptation to be human beings.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

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

Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare – something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state – something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.

Say not, ‚I have found the truth,‘ but rather, ‚I have found a truth.‘

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

Because of lack of moral principle, human life becomes worthless. Moral principle, truthfulness, is a key factor. If we lose that, then there is no future.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

The words of truth are always paradoxical.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.

Of course humans like to explore, and we should. There’s nothing wrong with that. But it’s more than that. It’s essential for your children and your children’s children.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

Every man is his own hell.

By indignities men come to dignities.

Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.

Real living is living for others.

Humans have certain properties and characteristics which are intrinsic to them, just as every other organism does. That’s human nature.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

It’s human nature to not say everything that’s on your mind at the time you think it. Because we fear saying something that people will laugh at, people will think is dumb. We’re afraid of being embarrassed.

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

That old law about ‚an eye for an eye‘ leaves everybody blind. The time is always right to do the right thing.

There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are – more humane.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out til too late that he’s been playing with two queens all along.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

I really believe in the philosophy that you create your own universe. I’m just trying to create a good one for myself.

I would be stupid not to be on my own side. But I’m a human being, too. And I’m on the side of human beings, rather than on the side of crocodiles.

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.