Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

Society has made us believe you should look like an 18-year-old model all your life.

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?

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

Each day is a little life: every waking and rising a little birth, every fresh morning a little youth, every going to rest and sleep a little death.

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

Truth is a pathless land.

I believe that it is better to tell the truth than a lie. I believe it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe it is better to know than to be ignorant.

Governments are not representative. They have their own power, serving segments of the population that are dominant and rich.

It isn’t generally the case that liberals dominate entire hierarchies. That isn’t generally how it works, because the hierarchies are usually set up so that conservatives fill up the hierarchies; it’s in the nature of hierarchy.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

No freeman shall be debarred the use of arms.

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

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

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency.

No one can say, ‚I have dropped out – I am no longer in the system.‘ When you’re in prison, you’re even closer to the system: you feel it more, and you might be in there for whatever reason. You don’t transform the system as an absolute thing.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded the individual.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

The arts have only ever interested a small minority of people, which acted as a kind of nursery to support artists.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Young people these days don’t trust anything at all. They want to be free.

If you’re a surfer, you just want to surf. You don’t know if anyone’s going to see you, and you don’t really care if they see you. You just live for that feeling.

And while the law of competition may be sometimes hard for the individual, it is best for the race, because it ensures the survival of the fittest in every department.

We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.

We Americans… bear the ark of liberties of the world.

If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

If a man walks in the woods for love of them half of each day, he is in danger of being regarded as a loafer. But if he spends his days as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making the earth bald before her time, he is deemed an industrious and enterprising citizen.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.

Politics have no relation to morals.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see, Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be.

This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

Cassius Clay is a name that white people gave to my slave master. Now that I am free, that I don’t belong anymore to anyone, that I’m not a slave anymore, I gave back their white name, and I chose a beautiful African one.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.

You can’t get a contemporary story about what is going on inside government, and how society sees itself, on American TV.

I have the space and liberty to create.

Let us ask ourselves, ‚What kind of people do we think we are?‘ And let us answer, ‚Free people, worthy of freedom and determined not only to remain so but to help others gain their freedom as well.‘

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

There’s something about death that is comforting. The thought that you could die tomorrow frees you to appreciate your life now.

Society is always taken by surprise at any new example of common sense.

I never leaf through a copy of National Geographic without realizing how lucky we are to live in a society where it is traditional to wear clothes.

Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

I’ve used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I’ve still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

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

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

Beauty is the only thing that time cannot harm. Philosophies fall away like sand, creeds follow one another, but what is beautiful is a joy for all seasons, a possession for all eternity.

The brain is wider than the sky.

People like to talk about war.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.