“A man is not idle because he is absorbed in thought. There is a visible labor and there is an invisible labor.”
“All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.”
“Destiny gives a sense of familiarity.”
“Empty your mind. Be formless. Shapeless. Like water. You put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Water can flow, or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
“I'm not upset that you lied to me, I'm upset that from now on I can't believe you.”
“If you can do and be anything anytime, then everything is like nothing.”
“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.”
“Philosophies necessary lead to a dead end, stuck on one idea in a well lit room of that idea.”
“The man who asks a question is a fool for a minute, the man who does not ask is a fool for life.”
“The unreal is more powerful than the real. Nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.”
“The word 'philosophy' means 'the love of wisdom.' Wisdom is the possession of knowledge, experience and good judgement. Yet knowledge itself is only information: wisdom is the use of knowledge to pursue the good life.”
“Things alter for the worse spontaneously, if they are not altered for the better designedly.”
“This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!”
“Truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.”
“What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest loneliness, and say, 'This life which you live must be lived by you once again and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!”
“What if I told you we've already had this conversation and we will have it again in the future?”
“What is happiness? The feeling that power increases; that resistance is overcome.”
“What, if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: 'This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live it once more and innumerable times more: and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything unutterably small or great in your life will have to return to you, all in the same succession and sequence—even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned upside down again and again, and you with it, speck of dust!”
“When we talk about our dreams coming true, we're talking about our ambitions. Dreaming is ultimately about awakening. The unconscious, from which dreams bubble up, seems to contain an image of the way you're supposed to be.”
“When you play games you must have limitations, if no limitations no games. The price of being is limitation or you can do or be whatever you like.”
“Which came first the chicken or the egg? The egg, laid by a bird that was not a chicken.”
“Why do bad things happen to good people?”
“Wisdom is the knowledge of eternal truths . Philosophy is love of knowledge.”
“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”
“Philosophy is by its nature something esoteric, neither made for the mob nor capable of being prepared for the mob.”
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.”
“Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.”
“Nihilism means that there is no meaning to anything, but the opposite is just as true, that there is meaning to everything.”
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
“If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
“One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.”
“Humility is the foundation of all the other virtues hence, there cannot be any other virtue except in mere appearance.”
“Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve. Nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of oneself.”
“The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money.”
“The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”
“There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.”
“It has gradually become clear to me what every great philosophy up til now has consisted of—namely, the confession of its originator, and a species of involuntary and unconscious autobiography.”
“There is a false saying, 'Whoever cannot save himself, how can he save others?' But if I have the key to your chains, why should your and my lock be the same.”
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”