“The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.”

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

Dare to know! Have the courage to use your own intelligence!

Space and time are the framework within which the mind is constrained to construct its experience of reality.

Settle, for sure and universally, what conduct will promote the happiness of a rational being.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

Since the human race’s natural end is to make steady cultural progress, its moral end is to be conceived as progressing toward the better. And this progress may well be occasionally interrupted, but it will never be broken off.

The death of dogma is the birth of morality.

The outcome of an act commonly influences our judgment about its rightness, even though the former was uncertain, while the latter is certain.

Art is purposiveness without purpose.

He who would know the world must first manufacture it.

We are not rich by what we possess but by what we can do without.

It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good will.

I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.

If God should really speak to man, man could still never know that it was God speaking.

How things may be in themselves, without regard to the representations through which they affect us, is utterly beyond the sphere of our cognition.

Dare to think!

I am a beau in nothing but my books.

The experience of writing ‘The Kite Runner’ is one I will always think back on with fondness. There is an energy, a romance in writing the first novel that can never be duplicated again.

Life doesn’t come with an instruction book; that’s why we have fathers.

Education today is a process of filling the mind with the contents of books, emptying the contents in the examination hall and returning empty-headed.

One whose knowledge is confined to books and whose wealth is in the possession of others, can use neither his knowledge nor wealth when the need for them arises.

I’m glad I wrote the book to show what I found out about the [ Standard Oil Company]. I’m glad many people read my book and found out the truth.

Give me books, French wine, fruit, fine weather and a little music played out of doors by somebody I do not know.

The younger generation is surrounded by the Internet, apps, and video games. But somehow, my books make them read.