Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.

Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.

All things must be examined, debated, investigated without exception and without regard for anyone's feelings.

Those who fear the facts will forever try to discredit the fact-finders.

Disturbances in society are never more fearful than when those who are stirring up the trouble can use the pretext of religion to mask their true designs.

Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things.

Skepticism is the first step on the road to philosophy.

Oh! how near are genius and madness! Men imprison them and chain them, or raise statues to them.

In general, children, like men, and men, like children, prefer entertainment to education.

Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man.

You are the ultimate truth of your life. Everything that happens to you depends on you and your thoughts.

Self-reflection is a kind of self-judgment. The difference is just this – the former is positive and the latter is negative.

There was no heaven here. Eternal life meant waking up as a putrid corpse.

Vietnam was a country where America was trying to make people stop being communists by dropping things on them from airplanes.

Perfect love of God means the complete union of our will with God's.

Imagination is our ability to see inwardly and picture there that which has not yet appeared outwardly. Imagination is God's gift to us.

If I were God, I'd work on the reach of empathy.

Someday you're going to have to learn to separate what seems to be important from what really is important.

A painting is life and a painting is death . . . the picture is our own legacy left by tomorrow's dead for tomorrow's living.

God's training ground, where the missionary weapons are found, is the hidden, personal, worshiping life of the saint.