"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."

"For every expert there is an equal and opposite expert."

"I have gone around observing your activities from the outside. Because of this I have also been able to see things to which you have been blind... Every morning you have gone to work, but you have never been fully awake. Of course, you have seen the sun and the moon, the stars in the sky, and everything that moves, but you haven't really seen it at all. It is different for the Joker, because he was put into this world with a flaw: He sees too clearly and too much."

"In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty..."

"There are 10,000 books in my library, and it will keep growing until I die. This has exasperated my daughters, amused my friends and baffled my accountant. If I had not picked up this habit in the library long ago, I would have more money in the bank today; I would not be richer."

"We are here and it is now. The way I see it is, after that, everything tends towards guesswork."

"All things of the body stream away like a river, all things of the mind are dreams and delusion; life is warfare, and a visit to a strange land; the only lasting fame is oblivion."

"Let whoever can do so deceive me, he will never bring it about that I am nothing, so long as I continue to think I am something."

"Philosophy when superficially studied, excites doubt, when thoroughly explored, it dispels it."

"You say, it's dark. And in truth, I did place a cloud before your sun. But do you not see how the edges of the cloud are already glowing and turning light."

"Not how the world is, but that it is, is the mystery."

"There is your truth and there is my truth. As for the universal truth, it does not exist."

"The man who alters his way of thinking to suit others is a fool."

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."

"Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind."

"Anything you're good at contributes to happiness."

"All are one"

"There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact."

"The best ideas are common property"

"How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?"

"In practice people who study philosophy too long become very odd birds, not to say thoroughly vicious; while even those who are the best of them are reduced by...[philosophy] to complete uselessness as members of society."

"In the end mortals always expired before faeries. They were such finite creatures. Their first heartbeat and breath were but a blink from death. To add the weight of nourishing his insatiable court in a time of peace was to hasten that unconscionably."