Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

I don’t see myself as a philosopher. That’s awfully boring.

Courage is knowing what not to fear.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

I’m not afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

It is possible to provide security against other ills, but as far as death is concerned, we men live in a city without walls.

Rashness belongs to youth; prudence to old age.

We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s ‚Pensees‘ and read, ‚I am the great silent spaces between worlds.‘

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

My body is like breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I don’t think about it, I just have it.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

To love someone means to see him as God intended him.

Freedom from the desire for an answer is essential to the understanding of a problem.

Books are like a mirror. If an ass looks in, you can’t expect an angel to look out.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

Heaven is long-enduring, and earth continues long. The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure and continue thus long is because they do not live of, or for, themselves.

The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

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

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

Reality is a sliding door.

Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

Questions are never indiscreet, answers sometimes are.

In those days he was wiser than he is now; he used to frequently take my advice.

I still think like a Marxist in many ways.

I believe that one key to success is to accept truth, no matter how it’s spoken.

Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.

Men blaspheme what they do not know.

It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

The big message of gospel is that you don’t have to keep fighting the universe; you can stop, and the universe is quite good to you. There is a loss of ego.

The last suit that you wear, you don’t need any pockets.

To be is to do.

Our country does not believe in the concept of your God and my God. We believe that all gods are one. We have different ways of accepting Him. All ways lead to Him.

Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

You have to give others the opportunity to love who you love. If they don’t accept it, it’s their loss.

He that does good to another does good also to himself.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

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

You just want something else that someone else has, but that doesn’t mean what you have isn’t beautiful, because people always want what you have, and you always want what they have – no one is ever 100 per cent like, ‚Yes, I’m the bomb dot com – from head to toe!‘

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

More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth.

I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.

My great hope is to laugh as much as I cry; to get my work done and try to love somebody and have the courage to accept the love in return.

A man only learns in two ways, one by reading, and the other by association with smarter people.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Advice in old age is foolish; for what can be more absurd than to increase our provisions for the road the nearer we approach to our journey’s end.

When you put on a uniform, there are certain inhibitions that you accept.

If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be called research, would it?

Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats the beauty and the youth.

Grace is not part of consciousness; it is the amount of light in our souls, not knowledge nor reason.

There is nothing makes a man suspect much, more than to know little.