It is folly for an eminent man to think of escaping censure, and a weakness to be affected with it. All the illustrious persons of antiquity, and indeed of every age in the world, have passed through this fiery persecution.

Knowledge is true opinion.

Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.

Life without liberty is like a body without spirit.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

Only a man who knows what it is like to be defeated can reach down to the bottom of his soul and come up with the extra ounce of power it takes to win when the match is even.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

It’s not catastrophes, murders, deaths, diseases, that age and kill us; it’s the way people look and laugh, and run up the steps of omnibuses.

And, honestly, if somebody wants to criticize me for not being a trainwreck, that’s fine with me!

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

I can’t jump the highest. I’m obviously not the biggest, not the strongest.

I had my moments of being humiliated, and then I had moments of doing something humiliating. I’m glad I lived out both roles.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

I wanted to have the adoration of John Lennon but have the anonymity of Ringo Starr. I didn’t want to be a frontman. I just wanted to be back there and still be a rock and roll star at the same time.

Nature never deceives us; it is we who deceive ourselves.

By trying we can easily learn to endure adversity. Another man’s, I mean.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

Right after the assassination of Osama bin Laden, amid all the cheers and applause, there were a few critical comments questioning the legality of the act.

I have quite a decent constitution in spite of all my abuse of it and my advanced years. I’m still quite robust.

Failure is nature’s plan to prepare you for great responsibilities.

Love, we say, is life; but love without hope and faith is agonizing death.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

Some people are very good at being ‚stars‘ and it suits them. I’m grudging about it and I find it annoying.

Suffering becomes beautiful when anyone bears great calamities with cheerfulness, not through insensibility but through greatness of mind.

To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

You have to be tough and have a lot of faith.

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

Dave Mackay is my definition of a superstar. The man broke his leg three times, but wouldn’t be carried off. He walked off.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

If God treats you well by teaching you a disastrous lesson, you never forget it.

You can’t have it all, all at once. Who – man or woman – has it all, all at once? Over my lifespan, I think I have had it all. But in different periods of time, things were rough. And if you have a caring life partner, you help the other person when that person needs it.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

We come bulletproof in Ireland. We’re reared tough, and we fight.

When I was into my 30s, I became increasingly depressed by rejection letters. I had had the feeling that by the time I was 30, I would be established. But I was not at all. By the time of ‚Lives of Girls and Women,‘ I was into my 40s and I had become more thin-skinned.

I will not be triumphed over.

I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.

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

There will always be something to ruin our lives, it all depends on what or which finds us first. We are always ripe and ready to be taken.

What’s the good of drawing in the next breath if all you do is let it out and draw in another?

I never thought of losing, but now that it‘ s happened, the only thing is to do it right. That’s my obligation to all the people who believe in me. We all have to take defeats in life.

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.

Truth is always in harmony with herself, and is not concerned chiefly to reveal the justice that may consist with wrong-doing.

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.‘

Which death is preferably to every other? ‚The unexpected‘.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

First ask yourself: What is the worst that can happen? Then prepare to accept it. Then proceed to improve on the worst.

Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again.

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.