You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

Every man over forty is a scoundrel.

We learned about honesty and integrity – that the truth matters… that you don’t take shortcuts or play by your own set of rules… and success doesn’t count unless you earn it fair and square.

There is nothing permanent except change.

Not everyone can see the truth, but he can be it.

You’ve got to invest in the world, you’ve got to read, you’ve got to go to art galleries, you’ve got to find out the names of plants. You’ve got to start to love the world and know about the whole genius of the human race. We’re amazing people.

The thing that I fear discriminating against is humor and truth.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.

To attain any assured knowledge about the soul is one of the most difficult things in the world.

The cautious seldom err.

Half a truth is better than no politics.

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

As a matter of self-preservation, a man needs good friends or ardent enemies, for the former instruct him and the latter take him to task.

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

I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion.

Friendship often ends in love, but love in friendship – never.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is truth.

Wisely, and slow. They stumble that run fast.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

It’s not an experiment if you know it’s going to work.

Start with God – the first step in learning is bowing down to God; only fools thumb their noses at such wisdom and learning.

There is a fundamental question we all have to face. How are we to live our lives; by what principles and moral values will we be guided and inspired?

The wit knows that his place is at the tail of a procession.

Ignorance and bungling with love are better than wisdom and skill without.

Money doesn’t talk, it swears.

It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

There is no such thing as Something for nothing.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well.

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

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

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

For, verily, great love springs from great knowledge of the beloved object, and if you little know it, you will be able to love it only little or not at all.

No man was ever wise by chance.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.

Build a man a fire, and he’ll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he’ll be warm for the rest of his life.

I have no faith in human perfectability. I think that human exertion will have no appreciable effect upon humanity. Man is now only more active – not more happy – nor more wise, than he was 6000 years ago.

You can always count on Americans to do the right thing – after they’ve tried everything else.

The ideas gained by men before they are twenty-five are practically the only ideas they shall have in their lives.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

Golf is a good walk spoiled.

Non-violence and truth are inseparable and presuppose one another.

Experience is the teacher of all things.

In golf, the player, coach and official are rolled into one, and they overlap completely. Golf really is the best microcosm of life – or at least the way life should be.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

Live to learn, and you will really learn to live.

As you get older, time speeds up but life slows down.

The great end of life is not knowledge but action.

Govern a great nation as you would cook a small fish. Do not overdo it.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.