“Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe.”

We do not know what to do with this short life, yet we yearn for another that will be eternal.

The average man, who does not know what to do with his life, wants another one which will last forever.

All ought to be common among friends.

We should adopt his principles and govern men as they are and not as what we’d like them to be.

Suffering — how divine it is, how misunderstood! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of the mind for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.

If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.

A person is never happy except at the price of some ignorance.

We chase dreams and embrace shadows.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.

To know is nothing at all; to imagine is everything.

It is human nature to think wisely and act in an absurd fashion.

If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living.

The history books which contain no lies are extremely tedious.

Nine tenths of education is encouragement.

I have no doubt that it is part of the destiny of the human race in it’s gradual improvement, to leave off eating animals.

History is a people’s memory, and without a memory, man is demoted to the lower animals.

A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.

We don’t let animals suffer, so why humans?

Of all the animals, man is the only one that is cruel. He is the only one that inflicts pain for the pleasure of doing it.

Humans are social animals. We seek belonging. We feel safer in a tribe than alone. But not all tribes are healthy.

Man is the only animal that blushes. Or needs to.

Man is the cruelest animal.