A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.

Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare – something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state – something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.

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

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

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.

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

I’m a very private person. I don’t go out much. I’m home with kids. I go to work. I don’t really like being the focus of attention, which is why I like being behind the camera more.

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.

Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, – till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

Wisdom is found only in truth.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

Blessed is the man who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed was the ninth beatitude.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.

If man made himself the first object of study, he would see how incapable he is of going further. How can a part know the whole?

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

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

Nothing in life is promised except death.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

Reality is a sliding door.

What we live by we die by.

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.

To be is to do.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

We usually lose today, because there has been a yesterday, and tomorrow is coming.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‚War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.‘

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.

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’m not concerned about all hell breaking loose, but that a PART of hell will break loose… it’ll be much harder to detect.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

Well, the future for me is already a thing of the past.

Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

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

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

The spiritual is the parent of the practical.

The deed is everything, the glory is naught.

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.

I read Plato’s ‚Republic.‘ I read it through about five times until I could actually understand it.

Philosophy: Unintelligible answers to insoluble problems.