Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

The true and the approximately true are apprehended by the same faculty; it may also be noted that men have a sufficient natural instinct for what is true, and usually do arrive at the truth. Hence the man who makes a good guess at truth is likely to make a good guess at probabilities.

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

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

Twice and thrice over, as they say, good is it to repeat and review what is good.

I’m interested in two things. I’m interested in truth and I’m interested in fairness.

Do not rebuke mockers, or they will hate you; rebuke the wise, and they will love you.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

Truth emerges more readily from error than from confusion.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

Whatever you cannot understand, you cannot possess.

He who obtains has little. He who scatters has much.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

It’s no wonder that truth is stranger than fiction. Fiction has to make sense.

To be good is noble; but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble.

Start with what is right rather than what is acceptable.

Our faith is faith in someone else’s faith, and in the greatest matters this is most the case.

Great talents are the most lovely and often the most dangerous fruits on the tree of humanity. They hang upon the most slender twigs that are easily snapped off.

There is no such thing as part freedom.

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.

We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

Truth cannot be brought down; rather, the individual must make the effort to ascend to it. You cannot bring the mountaintop to the valley. If you would attain to the mountaintop, you must pass through the valley, climb the steeps, unafraid of the dangerous precipices.

Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

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

I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.

The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort.

It is the nature of every person to error, but only the fool perseveres in error.

The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

There is no such thing as Something for nothing.

Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.

Great thoughts speak only to the thoughtful mind, but great actions speak to all mankind.

The life so short, the craft so long to learn.

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

‚Suffering should not make us bitter people,‘ my mother once said, ‚it should make us better comforters.‘ Young people need to hear this from those who have walked before them, because someday they’ll be walking those same steps, but there may not be anyone following behind.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

The wise ones fashioned speech with their thought, sifting it as grain is sifted through a sieve.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

The world itself is the will to power – and nothing else! And you yourself are the will to power – and nothing else!

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

It does not do to leave a live dragon out of your calculations, if you live near him.

The word ‚happy‘ would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

I used to read five psalms every day – that teaches me how to get along with God. Then I read a chapter of Proverbs every day and that teaches me how to get along with my fellow man.

Life is warfare.

As a blind man has no idea of colors, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things.

Basically, at the very bottom of life, which seduces us all, there is only absurdity, and more absurdity. And maybe that’s what gives us our joy for living, because the only thing that can defeat absurdity is lucidity.

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

Thomas Jefferson once said, ‚We should never judge a president by his age, only by his works.‘ And ever since he told me that, I stopped worrying.

What I’ve discovered is that in art, as in music, there’s a lot of truth-and then there’s a lie. The artist is essentially creating his work to make this lie a truth, but he slides it in amongst all the others. The tiny little lie is the moment I live for, my moment. It’s the moment that the audience falls in love.