Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

What people call impartiality may simply mean indifference, and what people call partiality may simply mean mental activity.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

As soon as man does not take his existence for granted, but beholds it as something unfathomably mysterious, thought begins.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

The good is the beautiful.

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

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.

Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty – his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.

He who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.

The way you see people is the way you treat them, and the way you treat them is what they become.

The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

I’m not concerned with people seeing me in a certain way. Some people see me as a kid, some people see me as an adult. But I’m seriously not going to complain how anybody sees me, as long as they see me.

I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.

Is the babe young? When I behold it, it seems more venerable than the oldest man.

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.

All that we call ideal in Greek or any other art, because to us it is false and visionary, was, to the makers of it, true and existent.

Man is not the sum of what he has already, but rather the sum of what he does not yet have, of what he could have.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

All things in the world come from being. And being comes from non-being.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of government in the next.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

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

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

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

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

To do a great right do a little wrong.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

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

The ear is the avenue to the heart.

To the dumb question, ‚Why me?‘ the cosmos barely bothers to return the reply, ‚Why not?‘

The art of living well and the art of dying well are one.

Most people say that it is the intellect which makes a great scientist. They are wrong: it is character.

The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.

If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

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

To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.

It’s very difficult for the American people to believe that our government, one of the richest on Earth, is also one of the stingiest on Earth.

It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.