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

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

Be willing to have it so. Acceptance of what has happened is the first step to overcoming the consequences of any misfortune.

I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.

I haven’t gone out of my way to seek advice from people I don’t know.

The thing about the truth is, not a lot of people can handle it.

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

Too much of what is called ‚education‘ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.

I kind of thought that stand-up comedy would suffer from the Internet because people seem to know more about the craft of stand-up than ever before. I thought it would seem trite. Kind of like if you know more about magicians, you wouldn’t love them.

States are not moral agents.

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live as if there isn’t and to die to find out that there is.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

Be smarter than other people, just don’t tell them so.

Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

I define nothing. Not beauty, not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

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.

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

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

Every time I plant a seed, He say kill it before it grow, he say kill it before they grow.

I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.

Men always talk about the most important things to perfect strangers. In the perfect stranger we perceive man himself; the image of a God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of wisdom of a mustache.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.

Wealth is well known to be a great comforter.

Most gods throw dice, but Fate plays chess, and you don’t find out til too late that he’s been playing with two queens all along.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

Time stays, we go.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

The arrogance of age must submit to be taught by youth.

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.

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

As you know, I’m an immigrant. I came over here as an immigrant, and what gave me the opportunities, what made me to be here today, is the open arms of Americans. I have been received. I have been adopted by America.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

A man who views the world the same at fifty as he did at twenty has wasted thirty years of his life.

What the Pope thinks of being gay does not matter to the world. It matters to the people who like the Pope and follow the Pope… It is not a reflection of all religious people.

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

Effective communication is 20% what you know and 80% how you feel about what you know.

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

If you can be well without health, you may be happy without virtue.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching.

Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty – his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.

Science is the father of knowledge, but opinion breeds ignorance.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

The only source of knowledge is experience.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.