Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense.

A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.

Talk of mysteries! Think of our life in nature—daily to be shown matter, to come in contact with it—rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! The solid earth! The actual world! The common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? Where are we?

Much reading is an oppression of the mind, and extinguishes the natural candle, which is the reason of so many senseless scholars in the world.

Let thy speech be short, comprehending much in few words

People all over the nation are starved for honesty and common sense.

Every high civilization decays by forgetting obvious things.

Look at the stars and not down at your own feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

It never ceases to amaze me: We all love ourselves more than other people, but care more about their opinion than our own.

What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.

My own art is a negation of society, an affirmation of the individual, outside all rules and demands of society.

Diversity of opinion within the framework of loyalty to our free society is not only basic to a university but to the entire nation.

It is not reason which is the guide of life, but custom.

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

We know of no culture that has said, articulately, that there is no difference between men and women except in the way they contribute to the creation of the next generation.

Most people are on the world, not in it—have no conscious sympathy or relationship to anything about them—undiffused, separate, and rigidly alone like marbles of polished stone, touching but separate.

You don't have to be big or well known to be great.

Racism is not dead, but it is on life support—kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as ‘racists’.

If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.

America’s abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the “common good,” but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes.