“The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.”

You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meanings of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.

This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot.

For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere.

If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black.

People become concerned with being more humble than other people.

The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.

Life is like music for its own sake. We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present.

Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.

A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

I have no other self than the totality of things of which I am aware.

Stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction.

The function and duty of a quality human being is the sincere and honest development of one’s potential.

I will always work for human rights for all people.

To encourage literature and the arts is a duty which every good citizen owes to his country.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity at any price, peace at any price, safety first instead of duty first and love of soft living and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

There is a love of wild nature in everybody, an ancient mother-love showing itself whether recognized or no, and however covered by cares and duties.

Gentlemen, you will permit me to put on my spectacles, for, I have grown not only gray, but almost blind in the service of my country.

Be with a leader when he is right, stay with him when he is still right, but, leave him when he is wrong.

Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.