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

The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a price, and to be bought for it.

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.

What goes up must come down.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

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

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.

I learned to fly a few years ago in England. It’s the only place I’m completely alone – up in the air, detached from everything.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

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.

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

If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

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

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

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.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.

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.‘

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

Information is not knowledge.

I never ask anyone else’s opinion. They don’t count.

I myself have been on my own and utterly independent since I graduated. I haven’t belonged to any company or any system. It isn’t easy to live like this in Japan.

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.

What is truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

Existence precedes and rules essence.

A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

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.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

Morality is the theory that every human act must be either right or wrong, and that 99 % of them are wrong.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

Injustice in the end produces independence.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

Our philosophy is that we care about people first.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don’t get that.

Fear is the mother of morality.

If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?

Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by somekind of cosmic lawgiver.

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

He who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.

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

Fortunately we’re not a public company – we’re a private group of companies, and I can do what I want.