“Ideologies are substitutes for true knowledge, and ideologues are always dangerous when they come to power, because a simple-minded I-know-it-all approach is no match for the complexity of existence.”

Perhaps you are overvaluing what you don’t have and undervaluing what you do.

See the truth. Tell the truth.

Thus, you should never sacrifice what you could be for what you are.

You can only find out what you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how you act.

Women select men. That makes them nature, because nature is what selects.

People who know what to expect from one another can act together to tame the world.

When you have something to say, silence is a lie.

When the aristocracy catches a cold, as it is said, the working class dies of pneumonia.

The purpose of life, as far as I can tell, is to find a mode of being that’s so meaningful that the fact that life is suffering is no longer relevant.

True thinking is rare – just like true listening.

It is better, proverbially, to rule your own spirit than to rule a city.

To act is literally to manifest preference about one set of possibilities, contrasted with an infinite set of alternatives. If we wish to live, we must act. Acting, we value.

That’s poetic in its malevolence.

Anyone who was out to change the world by changing others was to be regarded with suspicion. The temptations of such a position were too great to be resisted.

What you aim at determines what you see.

Worthlessness is the default condition.