Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

Silence is the virtue of fools.

Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

Man is an idea, and a precious small idea once he turns his back on love.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

The good is the beautiful.

Having nothing, nothing can he lose.

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

A useless life is an early death.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

Nature is not human hearted.

Actions are the seed of fate deeds grow into destiny.

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

He who steals a little steals with the same wish as he who steals much, but with less power.

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

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

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

It is as necessary for man to live in beauty rather than ugliness as it is necessary for him to have food for an aching belly or rest for a weary body.

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

To me, if life boils down to one thing, it’s movement. To live is to keep moving.

Truth is beautiful, without doubt; but so are lies.

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.

Absence and death are the same – only that in death there is no suffering.

We tell lies, yet it is easy to show that lying is immoral.

My philosophy is, it’s always very rewarding when you can make an audience laugh. I don’t mind making fun of myself. I like self-deprecating comedy. But I’d like you to laugh with me occasionally, too.

To realize that you do not understand is a virtue; Not to realize that you do not understand is a defect.

Virtue is a habit of the mind, consistent with nature and moderation and reason.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

It may be that our role on this planet is not to worship God – but to create him.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

For what shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world, and suffer the loss of his soul?

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

There never was a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

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

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

A moral monopoly is the antithesis of a marketplace of ideas.

My philosophy in life is, Decide what you want to do. You have to have something to hope for.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

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

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

I don’t use Twitter for bad.

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

If anyone offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see by what stipulation anything certain can be determined in any science, since one or another set of hypotheses may always be devised which will appear to supply new difficulties.

If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you’re just one more deluded Pollyanna.

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

The dropping of bombs on people – isn’t that terrorism?

Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.

What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.

One may no more live in the world without picking up the moral prejudices of the world than one will be able to go to hell without perspiring.

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.

Modern science says: ‚The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.‘ From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

Virtue is not left to stand alone. He who practices it will have neighbors.