Do not weep do not wax indignant. Understand.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.

Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.

Nothing in nature is by chance... Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.

The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.

Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition.

Extraordinary power exists in a trial of patience. Few endure their trials well enough to discover this.

Face it, George – unlike cholera, death is the only disease everyone is guaranteed to get.’Heath nodded slowly. ‘But usually only once, Hamish. Usually only once.

When people turn other people into selfobjects, they are trying to turn a person into a kind of spare part.

Only humans can voice the adoration and plea that goes up silently from the rest of creation, and only humans can withhold their voices from it.

When I was 13 or 14, my mother used to gift me books that I was dying to read. Those are my most memorable birthday gifts.

Does truth prevail more if we are not on speaking terms with those whose view of truth differs from ours?

I have a fierce desire to paint colour.

How can you laugh when your mother's hungry? How can you smile when the reasons for smiling are wrong?

As in, I think 'Badlands' is one of the funniest films of all time: "Every day I wish I was carried off to a magical land, but that never happened" is one of the funniest lines in any film.

You made me feel less alone; you made me feel not quite so deformed, uninformed and hunchbacked.