“But what then am I? A thing that thinks. What is that? A thing that doubts, understand, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, and that also imagines and senses.”

At last I will devote myself sincerely and without reservation to the general demolition of my opinions.

I had become aware, as early as my college days, that no opinion, however absurd and incredible can be imagined, that has not been held by one of the philosophers.

To know what people really think, pay attention to what they do, rather than what they say.

Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something.

Am I so tied to a body and senses that I am incapable of existing without them?

Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems.

The first precept was never to accept a thing as true until I knew it as such without a single doubt

Masked, I advance.

There is nothing more ancient than the truth.

When it is not in our power to determine what it true, we ought to follow what is most probable.

For I found myself embarrassed with so many doubts and errors that it seemed to me that the effort to instruct myself had no effect other than the increasing discovery of my own ignorance

All that is necessary to right action is right judgment, and to the best action the most correct judgment.

I desire to live in peace and to continue the life I have begun under the motto ‘to live well you must live unseen’.

Truths are more likely to have been discovered by one man than by nation

I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am.

He who hid well, lived well.

My purpose here is to affirm that the unitive state is a hidden path in itself, a movement in its own right that ultimately leads to no-self (no true-self and no-union). In short, the unitive state is the hidden path to no-self.

Love without truth is sentimentality; it supports and affirms us but keeps us in denial about our flaws. Truth without love is harshness; it gives us information but in such a way that we cannot really hear it.

I love black because it affirms, designs and styles. A woman in a black dress is a pencil stroke.

It is saying less than the truth to affirm that an excellent book (and the remark holds almost equally good of a Raphael as of a Milton) is like a well-chosen and well-tended fruit tree. Its fruits are not of one season only. With the due and natural intervals.

We affirm that the true story of capitalism is now beginning, because capitalism is not a system of oppression only, but is also a selection of values, a coordination of hierarchies, a more amply developed sense of individual responsibility.

Christianity affirms the value of each individual soul. Nazism denies it.

Rarely affirm, seldom deny, always distinguish.

Don’t surround yourself with people who just affirm you. Surround yourself with people who challenge you.