To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do.

Infinites, when considered absolutely without any restriction or limitation, are neither equal nor unequal, nor have any certain proportion one to another, and therefore, the principle that all infinites are equal is a precarious one.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

I tell everybody, I get so much because I give so much. I give freely, I give all my time, give all my money, give all of my soul. I try to motivate people. I try to inspire them.

We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.

Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.

We cannot change anything until we accept it. Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms – in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

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

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.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.

People do not wish to appear foolish; to avoid the appearance of foolishness, they are willing to remain actually fools.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.

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.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

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

Let’s just be smart this time. I’m looking for smart.

As long as the people don’t fear the truth, there is hope. For once they fear it, the one who tells it doesn’t stand a chance. And today, truth is still beautiful… but so frightening.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Hell is other people.

What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

By the sole fact of his entering into ‚Thought,‘ man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion.

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

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.

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

What is tolerance? It is the consequence of humanity. We are all formed of frailty and error; let us pardon reciprocally each other’s folly – that is the first law of nature.

We cannot learn men from books.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

Life is wasted on the living.

At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.

Necessity never made a good bargain.

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.

Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.

I don’t see the wisdom in modern politicians that I once saw in men like Dean Acheson, David Bruce, or George Marshall. In my day, the northeastern establishment dominated foreign policy formulation, but the composition and distribution of our population is very different today.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

Don’t get older just to get wiser. If you get older, you will be wiser, I believe that – if you dare. But get older because it’s fun!

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

They must often change, who would be constant in happiness or wisdom.

Listen to many, speak to a few.

When you give, it comes back to you.

No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

To know what you know and what you do not know, that is true knowledge.