To be truly ignorant, be content with your own knowledge.

The effect of life in society is to complicate and confuse our existence, making us forget who we really are by causing us to become obsessed with what we are not.

A petty thief is put in jail. A great brigand becomes a ruler of a Nation.

The perfect man uses his mind as a mirror. It grasps nothing. It regrets nothing. It receives but does not keep.

Do not struggle. Go with the flow of things, and you will find yourself at one with the mysterious unity of the Universe.

If you have insight, you use your inner eye, your inner ear, to pierce to the heart of things, and have no need of intellectual knowledge.

Let your mind wander in the pure and simple. Be one with the infinite. Let all things take their course.

The torch of doubt and chaos, this is what the sage steers by.

When an archer shoots for enjoyment, he has all his skill; when he shoots for a brass buckle, he gets nervous; when he shoots for a prize of gold, he begins to see two targets.

We cling to our own point of view, as though everything depended on it. Yet our opinions have no permanence; like autumn and winter, they gradually pass away.

Never admire a man by his strength; judge him in how he uses it- A way is made by walking it

To point out nonepistemic motives in another’s view of the world, therefore, is always a criticism, as it serves to cast doubt upon a person’s connection to the world as it is.

We’ve gotten to that stage all soulmates reach of speaking in broken phrases and incomplete sentences, our connected and all-knowing minds filling in the blanks left by redundant words.

If, on the other hand, in the midst of difficulties we are always ready to seize an advantage, we may extricate ourselves from misfortune.

The man with the best job in the country is the vice-president. All he has to do is get up every morning and say, 'How is the president?'

HOLLY: Are you suggesting I occasionally stray from the rule book? FOALY: No. I'm suggesting you do not own a copy of the rule book, and if you do, you have certainly never opened it.

The only reason that it takes me seven years to do stuff is because I just don't really have a plan.

Budgets are nothing if not statements of priorities.

Be wary of people who use quotes... I don't know who said that.

This is unusual for me. I have given readings and not lectures. I have told people who ask for lectures that I have no lecture to give. And that is true.

The question of identity has separated from the issue of 'assimilation', having lost much of its drama and become, so to speak, a secular problem.