“In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.”

He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.

The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure, you are above everything distressing.

All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.

Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.

Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are determined.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness.

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

Sadness diminishes a man’s powers.

Freedom is self-determination.

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

In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.

A free man thinks of nothing less than of death, and his wisdom is a meditation, not on death, but on life.

The Government has been compelled to levy taxes which unavoidably hit large sections of the population.

You have to be compelled to write. If you’re not, nothing else that you do matters.

Yet often, they know but just don’t care. So the task of serious journalism isn’t just to lay out truths. It is to make vital truths compelling to a big audience.

“You only live once” is also an equally compelling reason not to do something

Man truly achieves his full human condition when he produces without being compelled by the physical necessity of selling himself as a commodity.