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

What we have to do, what at any rate it is our duty to do, is to revive the old art of Lying.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.

The natural desire of good men is knowledge.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

What is good? All that heightens the feeling of power, the will to power, power itself in man.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

Premature certainty is the enemy of the truth.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.

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

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

And thou wilt give thyself relief, if thou doest every act of thy life as if it were the last.

No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and establishing those properties by experiments, and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe.

If what you have done is unjust, you have not succeeded.

I think the materialist conception of history is valid.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

Honor and shame from no condition rise. Act well your part: there all the honor lies.

One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda.

Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes… can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.

Woman, or more precisely put, perhaps, marriage, is the representative of life with which you are meant to come to terms.

What if nothing exists and we’re all in somebody’s dream?

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

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.

Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.

Doubt is the incentive to truth and inquiry leads the way.

Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on; it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.

Throughout my career, I learned plenty about war on the battlefield, but I learned even more about the importance of finding peace. And that is what the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. do: prevent the wars that we can avoid so that we fight only the ones we must.

We are justified in enforcing good morals, for they belong to all mankind; but we are not justified in enforcing good manners, for good manners always mean our own manners.

No group and no government can properly prescribe precisely what should constitute the body of knowledge with which true education is concerned.

Thieves respect property. They merely wish the property to become their property that they may more perfectly respect it.

Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world’s phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again.

If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don’t get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.

From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

Cruelty is, perhaps, the worst kid of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.

Such is the feebleness of humanity, such is its perversity, that doubtless it is better for it to be subject to all possible superstitions, as long as they are not murderous, than to live without religion.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

A person should not be too honest. Straight trees are cut first and honest people are screwed first.

Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent.

We have always said that in our war with the Arabs we had a secret weapon – no alternative.

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

If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.

Reason is the enemy of faith.

I were better to be eaten to death with a rust than to be scoured to nothing with perpetual motion.

Who would set a limit to the mind of man? Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

All truth is simple… is that not doubly a lie?