“If you wish to live a life free from sorrow, think of what is going to happen as if it had already happened.”

It’s time to stop being vague. If you wish to be an extraordinary person, if you wish to be wise, then you should explicitly identify the kind of person you aspire to become.

Men are not troubled by things themselves, but by their thoughts about them.

Attach yourself to what is spiritually superior, regardless of what other people think or do. Hold to your true aspirations no matter what is going on around you.

We all dread a bodily paralysis, and would make use of every contrivance to avoid it; but none of us is troubled about a paralysis of the soul.

Events do not just happen, but arrive by appointment.

Don’t be concerned with other people’s impressions of you. They are dazzled and deluded by appearances. Stick with your purpose. This alone will strengthen your will and give your life coherence.

Anything worth putting off is worth abandoning altogether.

Don’t consent to be hurt and you won’t be hurt – this is a choice over which you have control.

If you seek Truth, you will not seek to gain a victory by every possible means; and when you have found Truth, you need not fear being defeated.

What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are.

What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are.

Freedom and happiness are won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.

Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.

Try not to react merely in the moment. Pull back from the situation. Take a wider view. Compose yourself.

All religions must be tolerated for every man must get to heaven in his own way.

Whoever is going to listen to the philosophers needs a considerable practice in listening.

I wish I were a girl again, half-savage and hardy, and free.

A messenger of Hope comes every night to me, And offers for short life, eternal liberty.

You’ve got to know your limitations. I don’t know what your limitations are. I found out what mine were when I was twelve. I found out that there weren’t too many limitations, if I did it my way.

There is very little real liberty in the world; even those who seem freest are often the most tightly bound. Law, custom, public opinion, fear or shame make slaves of us all, as you will find when you try your experiment.

No country can be called free which is governed by an absolute power; and it matters not whether it be an absolute royal power or an absolute legislative power, as the consequences will be the same to the people.

My grandfather was a man, when he talked about freedom, his attitude was really interesting. His view was that you had obligations or you had responsibilities, and when you fulfilled those obligations or responsibilities, that then gave you the liberty to do other things.

A theory deeply etched in our law is that a free society prefers to punish the few who abuse the rights of free speech after they break the law rather than to throttle them and all others beforehand.

Like so many named places in California it was less an identifiable city than a grouping of concepts–census tracts, special purpose bond-issue districts, shopping nuclei, all overlaid with access roads to its own freeway.