When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it – this is knowledge.

It is a great piece of folly to attempt to make anything out of my early life.

Precepts or maxims are of great weight; and a few useful ones on hand do more to produce a happy life than the volumes we can’t find.

I’m not this horrible, evil person.

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

No greater thing is created suddenly, any more than a bunch of grapes or a fig. If you tell me that you desire a fig, I answer you that there must be time. Let it first blossom, then bear fruit, then ripen.

Rightly defined philosophy is simply the love of wisdom.

To put it bluntly, I seem to have a whole superstructure with no foundation. But I’m working on the foundation.

Women have to be active listeners and interrupters – but when you interrupt, you have to know what you are talking about.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

States are not moral agents.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

Error is acceptable as long as we are young; but one must not drag it along into old age.

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two.

To be conscious that you are ignorant of the facts is a great step to knowledge.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

The good is the beautiful.

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

I want everybody to understand that I am an American Negro first before I am a member of any political party.

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

Remember that your imagination is yours and yours alone. You have the inborn capacity to use it in any way that you choose. No one else is responsible for your imagination. Anything placed in your imagination and held there ultimately becomes your reality.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

I was always taught not to answer no questions. I’m not really good at answering them because I get agitated so fast.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now – always.

The sum of wisdom is that time is never lost that is devoted to work.

Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet.

A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.

A witty saying proves nothing.

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

He had read much, if one considers his long life; but his contemplation was much more than his reading. He was wont to say that if he had read as much as other men he should have known no more than other men.

The greatest and most important problems of life are all fundamentally insoluble. They can never be solved but only outgrown.

Hollywood is not suited for me, and I am not suited for it.

Any man is liable to err, only a fool persists in error.

The book you don’t read won’t help.

Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone.

We must be our own before we can be another’s.

I don’t look at myself as a commodity, but I’m sure a lot of people have.

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.

I’m concerned that my technical skills have advanced to the point where I can get closer to what I’m aiming for, which is not such a good thing.

People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of character.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

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

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

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

Peace is liberty in tranquillity.

If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

I’m really trying to dredge up what one might call intellectual and moral material. For example, when do you realize that you are an American? What age does that happen to you? When do you realize what religion your parents practice? When does it all become conscious? I was interested in exploring all of that.

If we were not all so interested in ourselves, life would be so uninteresting that none of us would be able to endure it.

In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself – limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist.

Man’s enemies are not demons, but human beings like himself.

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

The fact is I am not having sex. But I feel absolutely ripe for the, what would you say? plucking?

If you are out to describe the truth, leave elegance to the tailor.

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

A lot of truth is said in jest.