We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

You’re never going to kill storytelling, because it’s built into the human plan. We come with it.

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

The way I talk is bizarre.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

Fear is the mother of morality.

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.

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

I wish I could shut up, but I can’t, and I won’t.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

I think it’s fair to say that personal computers have become the most empowering tool we’ve ever created. They’re tools of communication, they’re tools of creativity, and they can be shaped by their user.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

Science is but an image of the truth.

The end of life is to be like God, and the soul following God will be like Him.

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.

To conceal anything from those to whom I am attached, is not in my nature. I can never close my lips where I have opened my heart.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

How many things there are concerning which we might well deliberate whether we had better know them.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

When you have a conflict, that means that there are truths that have to be addressed on each side of the conflict. And when you have a conflict, then it’s an educational process to try to resolve the conflict. And to resolve that, you have to get people on both sides of the conflict involved so that they can dialogue.

Assuming if there’s such a thing as reality, if you have a false relationship with it, how can you do anything but fail?

Always try to use the language so as to make quite clear what you mean and make sure your sentence couldn’t mean anything else.

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

Finality is not the language of politics.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

Silence is one of the great arts of conversation.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

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.

To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.

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

It is too difficult to think nobly when one thinks only of earning a living.

Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.

I don’t want to tell President Obama how to make a speech. He’s a much better speech maker than I am. But I think always to tell the truth in a sometimes blatant way, even though it might be temporarily unpopular, is the best approach.

I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go-to form of communication. And I knew I could sing from being in tune with the radio.

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually.

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

I believe in the Golden Rule – The Man with the Gold… Rules.

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.

Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.

Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

To be absolutely certain about something, one must know everything or nothing about it.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

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

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

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