“It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.”

Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.

One of the surprising privileges of intellectuals is that they are free to be scandalously asinine without harming their reputations.

People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.

What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people’s faces as unfinished as their minds.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.

I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind.

You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you.

I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac.

It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.

You can never get enough of what you don’t need to make you happy.

The opposite of the religious fanatic is not the fanatical atheist but the gentle cynic who cares not whether there is a god or not.

It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.

To know a person’s religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

Nowhere at present is there such a measureless loathing of their country by educated people as in America.

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.

Folks, I’m telling you, birthing is hard and dying is mean- so get yourself a little loving in between.

Whence come I and whither go I? That is the great unfathomable question, the same for every one of us. Science has no answer to it.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives.

We all owe death a life.

I swear to keep the dead upon my mind, / Disdain for all time to be overglad.

Death is the end of a lifetime, not the end of a relationship.

And here I am, dying in my bed, like cattle die. May the eyes of cowards never sleep.

Love is how you stay alive, even after you are gone.