“Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.”

There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.

What good is it looking for our happiness in the opinion of others if we can find it in ourselves?

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

What wisdom can you find greater than kindness.

One does not drink. One gives a kiss to his glass, and the wine returns a caress to you.

However great a man’s natural talent may be, the act of writing cannot be learned all at once.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man

Being wealthy isn’t just a question of having lots of money. It’s a question of what we want. Wealth isn’t an absolute, it’s relative to desire. Every time we seek something that we can’t afford, we can be counted as poor, how much money we may actually have.

To write a good love letter, you ought to begin without knowing what you mean to say, and to finish without knowing what you have written.

Nature never deceives us; it is always we who deceive ourselves.

Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Maker of the world, but degenerates once it gets into the hands of man

Happiness requires three things, a good bank account, a good cook, and good digestion.

The real world has its limits; the imaginary world is infinite. Unable to enlarge the one, let us restrict the other, for it is from the difference between the two alone that are born all the pains which make us truly unhappy.

MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.

MAN is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.

In our civilization, and under our republican form of government, intelligence is so highly honored that it is rewarded by exemption from the cares of office.

The longer I live and the more I study the question, the more I am convinced that it is not so much the problem of what you will do with Negro, as what the Negro will do with you and your ‘civilization’.

No white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language, and professes the white man’s religion.

My own view is that this planet is used as a penal colony, lunatic asylum and dumping ground by a superior civilisation, to get rid of the undesirable and unfit. I can’t prove it, but you can’t disprove it either.

No form of theocracy, whether it’s manifested in a violent or non-violent form, is ever good for civilisation, and we have to challenge it in civil society as well as we would challenge Christian-based theocracy, or any other form of bigotry.

One could surely argue that the Buddhist tradition, taken as a whole, represents the richest source of contemplative wisdom that any civilization has produced.

CIVILISATION is not to be judged by the rapidity of communication, but by the value of what is communicated.

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.