You can’t do anything about the length of your life, but you can do something about its width and depth.
A philosopher is a blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there. A theologian is the man who finds it.
In the present case it is a little inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible to any public office of trust or profit in the Republic. But I do not repine, for I am a subject of it only by force of arms.
The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.
To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia – to mistake an ordinary young woman for a goddess.
Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking.
Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.
I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time.
Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.
The essence of science is that it is always willing to abandon a given idea for a better one; the essence of theology is that it holds its truths to be eternal and immutable.
An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it makes a better soup.
Truth would quickly cease to be stranger than fiction, once we got as used to it.