We feel much happier and more secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, then when we have lost our way and do not know where to turn.

To know all about anything is to know how to deal with it under all circumstances.

A little reflection will show us that every belief, even the simplest and most fundamental, goes beyond experience when regarded as a guide to our actions.

Namely, we have no right to believe a thing true because everybody says so unless there are good grounds for believing that some one person at least has the means of knowing what is true, and is speaking the truth so far as he knows it.

No simplicity of mind, no obscurity of station, can escape the universal duty of questioning all that we believe.

Into this, for good or ill, is woven every belief of every man who has speech of his fellows. A awful privilege, and an awful responsibility, that we should help to create the world in which posterity will live.

To consider only one other such witness: the followers of the Buddha have at least as much right to appeal to individual and social experience in support of the authority of the Eastern saviour.

Nor is it that truly a belief at all which has not some influence upon the actions of him who holds it.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

There is no scientific discoverer, no poet, no painter, no musician, who will not tell you that he found ready made his discovery or poem or picture - that it came to him from outside, and that he did not consciously create it from within.

If a belief is not realized immediately in open deeds, it is stored up for the guidance of the future.

When an action is once done, it is right or wrong for ever; no accidental failure of its good or evil fruits can possibly alter that.

Every rustic who delivers in the village alehouse his slow, infrequent sentences, may help to kill or keep alive the fatal superstitions which clog his race.

If I steal money from any person, there may be no harm done from the mere transfer of possession; he may not feel the loss, or it may prevent him from using the money badly. But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself dishonest.

The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs.

An atmosphere of beliefs and conceptions has been formed by the labours and struggles of our forefathers, which enables us to breathe amid the various and complex circumstances of our life.

This sense of power is the highest and best of pleasures when the belief on which it is founded is a true belief, and has been fairly earned by investigation.

Our lives our guided by that general conception of the course of things which has been created by society for social purposes.

He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it, he has committed it already in his heart.

To sum up: it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

We may always depend on it that algebra, which cannot be translated into good English and sound common sense, is bad algebra.

In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts.

We feel much happier and more secure when we think we know precisely what to do, no matter what happens, then when we have lost our way and do not know where to turn.

The rule which should guide us in such cases is simple and obvious enough: that the aggregate testimony of our neighbours is subject to the same conditions as the testimony of any one of them.

The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, though that is great enough; but that it should become credulous, and lose the habit of testing things and inquiring into them; for then it must sink back into savagery.

He who truly believes that which prompts him to an action has looked upon the action to lust after it he has committed it already in his heart.

There is one thing in the world more wicked than the desire to command, and that is the will to obey.

I'm not great at dealing with death, I have to say. I find death very hard: my mum, my dad, Sid Vicious. I'm not a monster; I feel it and it scares me. One death at a time, please, is all my heart will bear.

If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you're just one more deluded Pollyanna.

It is really awful to be filming and not know if you can pay everybody.

A friend is someone who makes it easy to believe in yourself.

What I remember most about high school are the memories I created with my friends.

I know Italians and I like them. A lot of my father's best friends were Italians.

Purity is something that comes from another world. It's a radiance that enters into this world of transformation and change.

Suffering is a corrective to point out a lesson which by other means we have failed to grasp, and never can it be eradicated until that lesson is learnt.

It's always fun teasing the person. When they ask if I'm gay, I say, 'Oh, I don't know.'

The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.

Awakening means you've come home to yourself, that consciousness shifted back to its original nature.

The characters do have a life of their own; it's weird.

I looked at 30 as a challenge; I was naive then.

Bill Clinton, talking about the need to financially empower wives and mothers in regressive countries, once remarked that women have 'the responsibility gene.' No one has that gene more markedly than his wife.

I've been to Chicago a lot - it's one of my favorite places. My wife is from Chicago, and I worked in the theater there a lot.

Baking makes me focus. On weighing the sugar. On sieving the flour. I find it calming and rewarding because, in fairness, it is sort of magic - you start off with all this disparate stuff, such as butter and eggs, and what you end up with is so totally different. And also delicious.

I have always worked hard, and seeing so many Icelanders make tremendous efforts to cope with difficult tasks and decisions inspires me.

Modelling killed me.

When I was young there was no respect for the young, and now that I am old there is no respect for the old. I missed out coming and going.

We are very, very small, but we are profoundly capable of very, very big things.

Value of life depends not on your possessions but on your donation.

I miss Denny Crane.