“Do not weep. Do not wax indignant. Understand.”

“I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.”

“The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.”

“The less the mind understands and the more things it perceives, the greater its power of feigning is; and the more things it understands, the more that power is diminished.”

“I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of the peace.”

“The endeavor to understand is the first and only basis of virtue.”

“I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.”