True teaching is not an accumulation of knowledge; it is an awaking of consciousness which goes through successive stages.

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.

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

I have no desire to suffer twice, in reality and then in retrospect.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Being aware of a single shortcoming within yourself is far more useful than being aware of a thousand in someone else!

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.

There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.

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

For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone.

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it; and when you do not know a thing. To allow that you do not know it—this is knowledge.

The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.

The desire of power in excess caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge in excess caused man to fall.

Cherish that which is within you, and shut off that which is without; for much knowledge is a curse.

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.