To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don’t be.

To summarize, draft resistance can make use of the inegalitarian nature of American society as a technique for increasing the cost of American aggression, and it threatens values that are important to those in a decision-making position.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

Our philosophy is that we care about people first.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

Since God created the world, He also created reality.

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

Anything for the quick life, as the man said when he took the situation at the lighthouse.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

The world itself is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power – and nothing else!

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

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.

Life is hard. After all, it kills you.

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from… Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.

We might as well die as to go on living like this.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Nature abhors annihilation.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

Presidents quickly realize that while a single act might destroy the world they live in, no one single decision can make life suddenly better or can turn history around for the good.

Every man, every woman who has to take up the service of government, must ask themselves two questions: ‚Do I love my people in order to serve them better? Am I humble and do I listen to everybody, to diverse opinions in order to choose the best path?‘ If you don’t ask those questions, your governance will not be good.

It has not yet become obvious to me that there’s no real problem. I cannot define the real problem; therefore, I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem.

I always wanted to do things right and represent myself as somebody that took the art serious and someone that took the business serious also, so I had time to weigh the options and figure it out and do my best to create the situation that was ideal.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

Next to knowing when to seize an opportunity, the most important thing in life is to know when to forego an advantage.

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

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

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

Man’s unhappiness, as I construe, comes of his greatness; it is because there is an Infinite in him, which with all his cunning he cannot quite bury under the Finite.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the ‚Not Me,‘ that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, ‚Nature.‘

I’m for women choosing whatever they want to do but they have to really know what they are doing.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

It is a clear gain to sacrifice pleasure in order to avoid pain.

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.

You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You’re on your own, and you know what you know. And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go.

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.

Somewhere, everywhere, now hidden, now apparent in what ever is written down, is the form of a human being. If we seek to know him, are we idly occupied?

Peace is liberty in tranquillity.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.

I don’t have a magic formula for prioritizing the world’s problems.

This nuclear option is ultimately an example of the arrogance of power.

I delayed my father’s funeral because of cricket.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

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

When you get angry, your options narrow.

There are horrible people who, instead of solving a problem, tangle it up and make it harder to solve for anyone who wants to deal with it. Whoever does not know how to hit the nail on the head should be asked not to hit it at all.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

Great bodies of people are never responsible for what they do.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

The cosmos is about the smallest hole that a man can hide his head in.