“A king who feared wasps once decreed that they were abolished. As it happened, they did him no harm. But he was eventually stung to death by scorpions.”

“When prayer, rituals and ascetic life are just a means of self-indulgence, they are harmful rather than beneficial. This is quite obvious to people nowadays, when it is widely recognised that fixations are not the same as valuable and laudable observances. One should not pray if that prayer is vanity; rituals are wrong when they provide lower satisfactions, like emotional stimulus instead of enlightenment; he or she should not be an ascetic who is only enjoying it.”

“MAN: Kick him-he'll forgive you. Flatter him-he may or may not see through you. But ignore him and he'll hate you”

“What can you do with a person who says that he is absolutely uncertain about everything, and that he is absolutely certain about that?”

“An egocentric pessimist is a person who thinks he hasn't changed, but that other people are behaving worse than before.”

“If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!”

“History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.”