The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more amazing becomes what human beings have achieved.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

An Honest politician will not be tolerated by a democracy unless he is very stupid ... because only a very stupid man can honestly share the prejudices of more than half the nation.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

Cruel men believe in a cruel god and use their belief to excuse their cruelty. Only kindly men believe in a kindly god, and they would be kindly in any case.

I mean, of course that's a theoretical question, and we don't know what it would be for, and we don't know how many numbers there are. I am against American combat troops being in Syria and Iraq.

To say, my fate is not tied to your fate, is like saying your end of the boat is sinking.

We have to stop being defined by what we own, and start being defined by what we create.

I don't really sit at the computer from scratch. I prefer to get my ideas in my fingers and I write longhand first.

There is a world which poets cannot seem to enter. It is the world everybody else lives in. And the only thing poets seem to have in common is their yearning to enter this world.

Awareness is the key. Do we see the stories that we're telling ourselves and question their validity?

It's numbers like these that both bubble-theorists and market cheerleaders can pounce on to make their points. Reality is more mundane.

My favorite movies are movies that I go in and I leave deeply affected. Whether I laugh really hard or whether I cry really hard, I just want to feel really affected in that moment.

Nobody is free… Everyone has a prison. Wife, parents, children, they all make prisons.

A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.