The universe is wider than our views of it.

Keep your eyes wide open before marriage, and half-shut afterwards.

Ignorance never settle a question.

We must not allow ourselves to become like the system we oppose.

There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life. . . To seek a total unity is wrong. To give as much meaning to one’s life as possible is right to me.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen — not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

When civil fury first grew high, and men fell out they knew not why.

Man can learn nothing unless he proceeds from the known to the unknown.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

The more sand has escaped from the hourglass of our life, the clearer we should see through it.

Never exceed your rights, and they will soon become unlimited.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.

When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don't seem to matter very much, do they?

Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousand of miles and all the years you have lived.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.