“Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what’s right.”

When asked for advice by beginners. Know your ending, I say, or the river of your story may finally sink into the desert sands and never reach the sea.

The Earth should not be cut up into hundreds of different sections, each inhabited by a self-defined segment of humanity that considers its own welfare and its own “national security” to be paramount above all other consideration.

Properly read, the Bible is the most potent force for atheism ever conceived.

There are no happy endings in history, only crisis points that pass.

The tyranny that now exists is actual. That which may exist in the future is potential. If we are always to draw back from change with the thought that the change may be for the worse, then there is no hope at all of ever escaping injustice.

I wish that I could say I was optimistic about the human race. I love us all, but we are so stupid and shortsighted that I wonder if we can lift our eyes to the world about us long enough not to commit suicide.

At odd and unpredictable times, we cling in fright to the past .

People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.

Intelligence is an accident of evolution, and not necessarily an advantage.

It is well-known that the friend of a conqueror is but the last victim.

Old people think young people haven’t learned about love. Young people think old people have forgotten about love.

Democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people into the world, the value of life not only declines, but it disappears. It doesn’t matter if someone dies.

The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing.

To make discoveries, you have to be curious about why the universe is the way it is.

It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.

People think of education as something that they can finish.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. But do not care to convince him. Men will believe what they see. Let them see.

I ought, or I ought not, constitute the whole of morality.

Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.

I became convinced that noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world and moral courage so rare.

I could die for you. But I couldn’t, and wouldn’t, live for you.

What you hear in my voice is fury, not suffering. Anger, not moral authority.