We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.

Wishful thinking is not idealism. It is self-indulgence at best and self-exaltation at worst. In either case, it is usually at the expense of others. In other words, it is the opposite of idealism.

All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril. Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.

People take different roads seeking fulfillment and happiness. Just because they’re not on your road doesn’t mean they’ve gotten lost.

If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.

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

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.

The frontier between hell and heaven is only the difference between two ways of looking at things.

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

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

I don’t suffer of anything that I’ve lost.

Death is a fearful thing.

The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

There are definitely elements of experience and stuff that someone who’s my age wouldn’t have. But there are also things that I can do that other people wouldn’t necessarily be able to.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

You will always have partial points of view, and you’ll always have the story behind the story that hasn’t come out yet. And any form of journalism you’re involved with is going to be up against a biased viewpoint and partial knowledge.

I have found out in later years that we were very poor, but the glory of America is that we didn’t know it then.

Children wish fathers looked but with their eyes; fathers that children with their judgment looked; and either may be wrong.

I have an expression I use as I’ve gone around the world through my career: ‚You never tell another man or woman what’s in their interest. They know their interest better than you know their interest.‘

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

So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

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

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

To correct a natural indifference I was placed half-way between misery and the sun. Misery kept me from believing that all was well under the sun, and the sun taught me that history wasn’t everything.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned… a man in a jail has more room, better food, and commonly better company.

Honor thy error as a hidden intention.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

The things I talk about and explain couldn’t happen – yet, they don’t seem impossible – you could say I talk about the world in an abstract perspective. But then, the world is basically insane – and it’s trying to pass itself off as being a sane place. I show it for what it is.

I think the idea of art kills creativity.

Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

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

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

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

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th‘ observer’s sake.

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

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.

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

I had a much better view with the halo than I expected.

The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.

I don’t look at a man who’s expert in one area as a specialist. I look at him as a rookie in ten other areas.

It is possible to live happily in the here and the now. So many conditions of happiness are available – more than enough for you to be happy right now. You don’t have to run into the future in order to get more.

Youth is wasted on the young.

People think, because we’re young, we aren’t complex, but that’s not true. We deal with life and love and broken hearts in the same way a woman a few years older might.

You might not have the things you want, but if you check carefully, you got all you need.

Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.