Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

Is science of any value? I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.

I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

Abortion isn’t a lesser evil, it’s a crime. Taking one life to save another, that’s what the Mafia does. It’s a crime. It’s an absolute evil.

Every fact is related on one side to sensation, and, on the other, to morals. The game of thought is, on the appearance of one of these two sides, to find the other: given the upper, to find the under side.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

The art of being a slave is to rule one’s master.

We have a tendency to condemn people who are different from us, to define their sins as paramount and our own sinfulness as being insignificant.

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

If God dropped acid, would he see people?

Reverence for life is the highest court of appeal.

I have thought there was some advantage even in death, by which we mingle with the herd of common men.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

I read Plato’s ‚Republic.‘ I read it through about five times until I could actually understand it.

No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man.

Patience is a virtue, and I’m learning patience. It’s a tough lesson.

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

Every man is his own hell.

A man must be both stupid and uncharitable who believes there is no virtue or truth but on his own side.

Moderation is the center wherein all philosophies, both human and divine, meet.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

Therefore, the good of man must be the end of the science of politics.

Politics have no relation to morals.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

To prefer evil to good is not in human nature; and when a man is compelled to choose one of two evils, no one will choose the greater when he might have the less.

A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first.

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.

Truly, I would not hang a dog by my will, much more a man who hath any honesty in him.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

Justice in the life and conduct of the State is possible only as first it resides in the hearts and souls of the citizens.

Natural ability without education has more often attained to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also… your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy.

It’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

We have got to change our ethics and our financial system and our whole way of understanding the world. It has to be a world in which people live rather than die; a sustainable world. It could be great.

I’ll never tell a lie. I’ll never make a misleading statement. I’ll never betray the confidence that any of you had in me. And I’ll never avoid a controversial issue.

What if nothing exists and we’re all in somebody’s dream?

I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.

Unbeing dead isn’t being alive.

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

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

Ought we not to ask the media to agree among themselves a voluntary code of conduct, under which they would not say or show anything which could assist the terrorists‘ morale or their cause while the hijack lasted.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

High moral character is not a precondition for great moral accomplishments.

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

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

Every sin is the result of a collaboration.

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

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

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.