"In the case of most pains let this remark of Epicurus aid thee, that the pain is neither intolerable nor everlasting, if thou bear in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination..."

"Every soul, the philosopher says, is involuntarily deprived of truth; consequently in the same way it is deprived of justice and temperance and benevolence and everything of the kind. It is most necessary to keep this in mind, for thus thou wilt be more gentle towards all."

"The art of life is more like the wrestler's art than the dancer's, in respect of this, that it should stand ready and firm to meet onsets which are sudden and unexpected."

"Look within. Within is the fountain of the good, and it will ever bubble up, if thou wilt ever dig."

"Why then dost thou choose to act in the same way? and why dost thou not leave these agitations which are foreign to nature, to those who cause them and those who are moved by them? And why art thou not altogether intent upon the right way of making use of things which happen to thee? for then thou wilt use them well, and they will be material for thee. Only attend to thyself, and resolve to be a good man in every act which thou doest; and remember..."

"Love that only which happens to thee and is spun with the thread of thy destiny. For what is more suitable?"

"Consider thyself to be dead, and to have completed thy life up to the present time; and live according to nature the remainder which is allowed thee."

"Every being ought to do that which is according to its constitution; and all other things have been constituted for the sake of the superior, but the rational for the sake of one another."

"Everywhere and at all times it is in thy power piously to acquiesce in thy present condition, and to behave justly to those who are about thee, and to exert thy skill upon thy present thoughts, that nothing shall steal into them without being well examined."

"Where any work can be done conformably to the reason which is common to gods and men, there we have nothing to fear; for where we are able to get profit by means of the activity which is successful and proceeds according to our constitution, there no harm is to be suspected."

"Another may be more expert in casting [throwing] his opponent; but he is not more social, nor more modest, nor better disciplined to meet all that happens, nor more considerate with respect to the faults of his neighbors."

"That which had grown from the earth, to the earth, But that which has sprung from heavenly seed, Back to the heavenly realms returns. This is either a dissolution of the mutual involution of the atoms, or a similar dispersion of the unsentient elements."

"Thou mayest foresee... the things which will be. For they will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate from the order of things now: accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years."

"This is a fine saying of Plato: That he who is discoursing about men should look also at earthly things as if he viewed them from some higher place; should look at them... a mixture of all things and an orderly combination of contraries."

"Look round at the courses of the stars, as if thou wert going along with them; and constantly consider the changes of the elements into one another; for such thoughts purge away the filth of the terrene life."

"For thus it is, men of Athens, in truth: wherever a man has placed himself thinking it is the best place for him, or has been placed by a commander, there in my opinion he ought to stay and to abide the hazard, taking nothing into the reckoning, either death or anything else, before the baseness [of deserting his post]."

"If the gods care not for me and for my children, There is a reason for it."

"It is not right to vex ourselves at things, For they care not about it."

"It is a base thing for the countenance to be obedient and to regulate and compose itself as the mind commands, and for the mind not to be regulated and composed by itself."

"From Antisthenes: It is royal to do good and be abused."

"But we can do so much now, with so little, that we can take care of everybody. That's why the idea of scarcity is all wrong."

"That's the basis of all politics: it has to be you or me, there's not enough for both of us. Survival of the fittest."

"Politics is policy. What policy should you follow in view of the idea that there isn't enough to go around — the power of the few, or the needs of the many? Political economy is based on misassumptions..."

"It seemed that the time would come evolutionarily when humans might have acquired enough knowledge of generalized principles to permit a graduation from class-two (entropically selfish) evolution into class-one (syntropically cooperative) evolution, thereafter making all the right moves for all the right reasons."

"You have to decide whether you want to make money or make sense, because the two are mutually exclusive."

"World Game finds that 60 percent of all the jobs in the U.S.A. are not producing any real wealth—i.e., real life support. They are in fear - underwriting industries or are checking-on-other-checkers, etc."

"The effective decisions can only be made by the independently thinking and adequately informed human individuals and their telepathically intercommunicated wisdom--the wisdom of the majority of all such human individuals -- qualifying for continuance in Universe as local cosmic problem-solvers -- in love with the truth and in individually spontaneous self-commitment to absolute faith in the wisdom, integrity, and love of God, who seems to wish Earthian humans to survive."

"Love is metaphysical gravity."

"The synergetic integral of the totality of principles is God, whose sum-total behavior in pure principle is beyond our comprehension and is utterly mysterious to us, because as humans — in pure principle — we do not and never will know all the principles."

"There are no solids. There are no things. There are only interfering and noninterfering patterns operative in pure principle, and principles are eternal. Principles never contradict principles. . . ."

"Humans have always unknowingly affected all Universe by every act and thought they articulate or even consider. . . . Realistic, comprehensively responsible, omni-system-considerate, unselfish thinking on the part of humans does absolutely affect human destiny."

"On personal integrity hangs humanity's fate. You can deceive others, you can deceive your brain-self, but you can't deceive your mind-self — for mind deals only in the discovery of truth and the interrelationship of all truths. The cosmic laws with which mind deals are noncorruptible. Cosmic evolution is omniscient God comprehensively articulate."

"It is the integrity of each individual human that is in final examination."

"The nearest each of us can come to God is by loving the truth."

"Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment. . . . Humanity is in 'final exam' as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in Universe"

"I am convinced that human continuance depends entirely upon: the intuitive wisdom of each and every individual . . . the individual's integrity of speaking and acting only on the individual's own within-self-intuited and reasoned initiative . . . the individual's never joining action with others as motivated only by crowd-engendered-emotionalism, or a sense of the crowd's power to overwhelm, or in fear of holding to the course indicated by one's own intellectual convictions."

"I set about fifty-five years ago (1927) to see what a penniless, unknown human individual with a dependent wife and newborn child might be able to do effectively on behalf of all humanity..."

"I was convinced in 1927 that humanity's most fundamental survival problems could never be solved by politics."

"They are not multi-national, but supra-national — above nations. They don't need any passports. They can go in and out of countries without permission from anyone."

"The giants are the supra-national corporations. The book (Grunch of Giants) is about how evolution must cope with them."

"Max Planck says, "The opposition never yields; they just die off." It's just a question of time. They are dying off."

"But it can hardly be read in a week. It takes some study."

"Critical Path is a way to dig yourself out from all that misinformation."

"Science... the ways it does its calculating that approximately nobody going in at a basic level can gain any sense of the whole."

"There is so much stupid information, misinformation around. You can't really get anywhere until you get out from under all that."

"The young world is giving up any interest in their political system. They have decided that it is absolutely corrupt."

"The politicians still say that it's you or me, and that's why they go for the gun."

"Up to now, the world of politics doesn't know that. That's why all nations are dependent on armaments, why we have the arms race."

"Fuller ... has better claim to the title of polymath than any man since Leonardo."

"I have learned never to reject one of Fuller's outrageous statements without careful consideration, and even hesitated to call "Sum of angels around each vertex" in the rough manuscript a misprint. The truth has usually turned out far stranger than Buckminster Fuller!"