In regard to intellect and true virtue, every nation is on a par with the rest, and God has not in these respects chosen one people rather than another.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.

If you want the present to be different from the past, study the past.

No matter how thin you slice it, there will always be two sides.

Reason connot defeat emotion, an emotion can only be displaced or overcome by a stronger emotion.

Nothing in nature is by chance... Something appears to be chance only because of our lack of knowledge.

The more clearly you understand yourself and your emotions, the more you become a lover of what is.

Men believe themselves to be free, simply because they are conscious of their actions, and unconscious of the causes whereby those actions are determined.

The world would be happier if men had the same capacity to be silent that they have to speak.

The highest endeavor of the mind, and the highest virtue, it to understand things by intuition.

We are young and the night is young. We are in the middle of somewhere and we are feeling everything.

Maybe the hardened clay was not as ugly as I had thought. Maybe what I resented was the color my father had painted me. The time had come to sand away some of that dreadful stain.

As I grow older, I think friendship between women is a thing to cherish.

It always freaks me out when I go to a sushi place and there's a Mexican.

One war only breeds another.

Everything was always something but something – and here was the rub – could never be everything.

The majority of human conflict comes from people just feeling disrespected.

We work our jobs, collect our pay, believe were gliding down the highway, when in fact we're slip sliding away.

The definition of adulthood is that you want to sleep.

I thought my goal in life was to be in a successful band, and I had got that, but I was as miserable as I had ever been, and I couldn't understand why that would be.