Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

The strength of a man’s virtue should not be measured by his special exertions, but by his habitual acts.

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.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

States are not moral agents.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

No public man can be just a little crooked.

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

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

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

The earth is supported by the power of truth; it is the power of truth that makes the sun shine and the winds blow; indeed all things rest upon truth.

Man is a universe within himself.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.

When I do good I feel good, when I do bad I feel bad, and that’s my religion.

I was never ignorant, as far as being experienced in classrooms and learning about different subjects and actually soaking it up, so I checked into college for a little bit. I took classes at a community college in West L.A. I took psychology, English, and philosophy.

Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

Don’t lie about anything, ever. Lying leads to Hell.

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

It’s better to be good than evil, but one achieves goodness at a terrific cost.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

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.

From wonder into wonder existence opens.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.

If you understand the universe, you control it, in a way.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It’s a battle you can’t hope to win – it’s a battle that’s going to go on forever. It’s part of the human condition.

One has to pay dearly for immortality; one has to die several times while one is still alive.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

Successful and fortunate crime is called virtue.

It was a favorite expression of Theophrastus that time was the most valuable thing that a man could spend.

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

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.

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.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

I hope I would not be so arrogant as to doubt anyone’s religion or belief.

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

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

Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.

Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Nature is not human hearted.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.