Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

The way of the Creative works through change and transformation, so that each thing receives its true nature and destiny and comes into permanent accord with the Great Harmony: this is what furthers and what perseveres.

The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

There’s no political point worth my son’s life.

If there is no God, everything is permitted.

I believe that Catholics involved in politics carry the values of their religion within them, but have the mature awareness and expertise to implement them. The Church will never go beyond its task of expressing and disseminating its values, at least as long as I’m here.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

Where the Mind is biggest, the Heart, the Senses, Magnanimity, Charity, Tolerance, Kindliness, and the rest of them scarcely have room to breathe.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich.

The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.

One who does not know when to die, does not know how to live.

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father.

Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom for himself.

My philosophy is, it’s always very rewarding when you can make an audience laugh. I don’t mind making fun of myself. I like self-deprecating comedy. But I’d like you to laugh with me occasionally, too.

Peace is liberty in tranquillity.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you’re just one more deluded Pollyanna.

I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.

There is nothing wrong with men possessing riches. The wrong comes when riches possess men.

Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness.

The Trump phenomenon is in large part a reaction of Middle America to attacks on its values by intellectual and academic communities. There are other reasons, but this is a significant one.

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

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 man’s character is his guardian divinity.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

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.

I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.

There is nothing so stable as change.

If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

For me, my secularism is, India first. I say, the philosophy of my party is ‚Justice to all. Appeasement to none.‘ This is our secularism.

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.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.

Men are only as great as they are kind.

There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

I follow three rules: Do the right thing, do the best you can, and always show people you care.

Honor is simply the morality of superior men.

It is perfectly possible to live a very moral life without a belief in God, and I think it’s perfectly possible to live a life peppered with ill-doing and believe in God.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.