To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes‘ palaces.

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

The way is long if one follows precepts, but short… if one follows patterns.

The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.

There is nothing so stable as change.

No, we don’t own our children. Our parental privilege is to love them, to lead them, and to let them go.

Oh, yes; you Virginians shed barrels of perspiration while standing off at a distance and superintending the work your slaves do for you. It is different with us. Here it is every fellow for himself, or he doesn’t get there.

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

Injustice in the end produces independence.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Our life is made by the death of others.

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

If God dropped acid, would he see people?

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those contracted by the body.

I want to do a certain thing in the world, and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.

It is impossible to love and to be wise.

It’s not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren’t doing.

The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker.

If life is a checker game, someone else is moving the pieces. It isn’t us. Don’t be surprised by amazing coincidences. There are no accidents. Consider, as I learned to do, the incredible interconnectedness of all of life.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.

How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

Your life must be a progression towards ownership – first mentally of your independence, and then physically of your work, owning what you produce.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

All of us are in the same place, each with our own rooms, and we were allowed to do whatever we wanted. Which is totally different than college, where they manage your schedule for you. In the NBA, you’re on your own.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

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.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

What really raises one’s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.

And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.

Man is a universe within himself.

Slavery is a weed that grows on every soil.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

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

There is no such thing as Something for nothing.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.