There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

The lie is a condition of life.

Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

Government’s first duty and highest obligation is public safety.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

When they call the roll in the Senate, the Senators do not know whether to answer ‚Present‘ or ‚Not guilty.‘

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others.

Man – a being in search of meaning.

People should not make me out to be like Jesus; I don’t walk on water.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

We must no more ask whether the soul and body are one than ask whether the wax and the figure impressed on it are one.

One can survive everything, nowadays, except death, and live down everything except a good reputation.

But even the President of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.

Anything important is never left to the vote of the people. We only get to vote on some man; we never get to vote on what he is to do.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.

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

The government of Israel doesn’t like the kinds of things I say, which puts them into the same category as every other government in the world.

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.

I think one of the great things about the United States has been our ability to maintain a distinction between our military and domestic law enforcement.

I think that there is never an indispensable leader, you know? I think that there is a time with dignity that one needs to leave.

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is to trust your team. It’s a lesson I’ve had to relearn quite a few times.

If God dropped acid, would he see people?

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

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

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.

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.

Who would set a limit to the mind of man? Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

What we have found in this country, and maybe we’re more aware of it now, is one problem that we’ve had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

In politics nothing is contemptible.

Among a people generally corrupt liberty cannot long exist.

Among those who dislike oppression are many who like to oppress.

Cruel leaders are replaced only to have new leaders turn cruel.

It is just as important that business keep out of government as that government keep out of business.

I think I’d be a better president because I was in combat.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

The universe is not indifferent to our existence – it depends on it.

Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.

Now that the House of Commons is trying to become useful, it does a great deal of harm.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.

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

I can move any crowd.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

Leaders are responsible not for running public opinion polls but for the consequences of their actions.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God’s universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

What we need is a system of thought – you might even call it a religion – that can bind humans together. A system that would fit the Republic of Chad as well as the United States: a system that would supply our idealistic young people with something to believe in.

No one even knows one percent of the fabulous history of Man; but thanks to history, we know about occurrences that go beyond the limits of the imaginable.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

I have always been grateful to Colonel Longley. He proved to me that when people in authority take a stand, good can come out of it.

Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.