But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

Nothing in the affairs of men is worthy of great anxiety.

It is only a man’s own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else’s meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.

Experience does not err. Only your judgments err by expecting from her what is not in her power.

If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave.

I’m not happy all the time, and I wouldn’t want to be because that would make me a shallow person. But I do try to find the good in everybody.

Real life is the life that’s in you, not your circumstances, like where you live or what job you have or who you’re in relationship with.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

How people treat you is their karma; how you react is yours.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

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

Only the really plain people know about love – the very fascinating ones try so hard to create an impression that they soon exhaust their talents.

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.

By the sole fact of his entering into ‚Thought,‘ man represents something entirely singular and absolutely unique in the field of our experience. On a single planet, there could not be more than one centre of emergence for reflexion.

Life is hard. After all, it kills you.

These things bring you to reality as to how fragile you are; at the same moment you are doing something that nobody else is able to do. The same moment that you are seen as the best, the fastest and somebody that cannot be touched, you are enormously fragile.

The ‚I think‘ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‚I breathe‘ which actually does accompany them.

There are few things more dreadful than dealing with a man who knows he is going under, in his own eyes, and in the eyes of others. Nothing can help that man. What is left of that man flees from what is left of human attention.

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the area of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone.

There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.

A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.

There’s definitely going to be things that I’m not very good at, things I can improve.

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

I kept a diary right after I was born. Day 1: Tired from the move. Day 2: Everyone thinks I’m an idiot.

My public is growing up just as I am. After all, I’m not 19 anymore and if I stick with the sex bit, who will be paying to see me when I’m 50?

For one swallow does not make a summer, nor does one day; and so too one day, or a short time, does not make a man blessed and happy.

There’s no one thing that is true. They’re all true.

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

I’m not a marketing person. I don’t ask myself questions. I go by instinct.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

Honestly, I’ve been thinking lately about how boring I am. When I do get time to myself, I watch TV.

I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

First and foremost, we need to be the adults we want our children to be. We should watch our own gossiping and anger. We should model the kindness we want to see.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

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

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.

Anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it.

I remain just one thing, and one thing only, and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

Then not only custom, but also nature affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

The best measure of a man’s honesty isn’t his income tax return. It’s the zero adjust on his bathroom scale.

Lulled in the countless chambers of the brain, our thoughts are linked by many a hidden chain; awake but one, and in, what myriads rise!

Remember, we are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.

I’m selfish.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

Don’t ever forget two things I’m going to tell you. One, don’t believe everything that’s written about you. Two, don’t pick up too many checks.

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.

Had I been a great athlete, I’m not sure I would have even gone into coaching. I may have turned out feeling that my life ended when my athletic career ended, as happens so many times with various athletes.

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.