We should not say that one man’s hour is worth another man’s hour, but rather that one man during an hour is worth just as much as another man during an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing: he is at the most time’s carcass.

To me a lush carpet of pine needles or spongy grass is more welcome than the most luxurious Persian rug.

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

I think the foundation of everything in my life is wonder.

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.

Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy. When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

And yet it moves.

An enemy generally says and believes what he wishes.

People look to time in expectation that it will eventually make them happy, but you cannot find true happiness by looking toward the future.

Those who do not know how to live must make a merit of dying.

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

I actually don’t want a throne at all, because I don’t view myself as a queen; I view myself as one of my fans.

The first requisite for the happiness of the people is the abolition of religion.

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.

To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

Don’t tell your problems to people: eighty percent don’t care; and the other twenty percent are glad you have them.

A wise man will make haste to forgive, because he knows the true value of time, and will not suffer it to pass away in unnecessary pain.

Inside every cynical person, there is a disappointed idealist.

If God dropped acid, would he see people?

I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there’s purpose and worth to each and every life.

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

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

If investments in banks fall, it is a tragedy, and people say, ‚What are we going to do?‘ but if people die of hunger, have nothing to eat or suffer from poor health, that’s nothing.

When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man’s life.

If you’re white and you’re wrong, then you’re wrong; if you’re black and you’re wrong, you’re wrong. People are people. Black, blue, pink, green – God make no rules about color; only society make rules where my people suffer, and that why we must have redemption and redemption now.

There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.

Being ‚contented‘ ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Before 1915, space and time were thought of as a fixed arena in which events took place, but which was not affected by what happened in it. Space and time are now dynamic quantities… space and time not only affect but are also affected by everything that happens in the universe.

In Italy they take cheap cloth and make it look expensive, but I take expensive cloth and make it look cheap. They just don’t understand.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.

Plato was a bore.

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

Time stays, we go.

It’s a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn’t support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, ‚Well, yeah,‘ but you start to think, ‚Why not, though?‘ What makes one more valuable than another?

Whether women are better than men I cannot say – but I can say they are certainly no worse.

Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?

I see the world in black and white, and I don’t like compromising.

I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul. The value of the poem is in the ratio of this elevating excitement.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value.

To be honest, I think kids have got a lot more going on than adults. They’ve got their heads screwed on a lot better.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

We are a nation founded as a rebuke to tyranny. A nation of revolutionaries who refused sovereign reign from afar. Hear me – we’re a nation that says give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. A nation built on our differences, guided by the belief that we’re all created equal.

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

I don’t have people following me around, like bodyguards. I don’t know how people live like that. Maybe the young movie stars have to live like that, I don’t know. But it seems a little crazy to me. I don’t think you need all that stuff.

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

Speeches that are measured by the hour will die with the hour.