Knowing the right thing is wonderful; practicing the right thing is even more wonderful; and the most wonderful thing is that helping others to practice the right thing!
Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business.
The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. . . Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
We may define "faith" as the firm belief in something for which there is no evidence. Where there is evidence, no one speaks of "faith. " We do not speak of faith that two and two are four or that the earth is round. We only speak of faith when we wish to substitute emotion for evidence. The substitution of emotion for evidence is apt to lead to strife, since different groups, substitute different emotions.
Envy was one of the most potent causes of unhappiness.
I believe four ingredients are necessary for happiness: health, warm personal relations, sufficient means to keep you from want, and successful work.
Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.
I dare anyone to debate me on things.
Where is the stretch? Where is the perfect fit? Where does it make sense? You have to be a Baryshnikov.
Not only are we going to shift in our own lives - away from always trying to identify ourselves on the basis of what we have, what we do, and who we are better than, and so on - but shift into more reaching out, more service, more kindness, more living the virtues that Lao Tzu spoke about twenty-five hundred years ago.