A life directed chiefly toward the fulfillment of personal desires will sooner or later always lead to bitter disappointment.

We must recognize what in our accepted tradition is damaging to our fate and dignity-and shape our lives accordingly.

Human beings can attain a worthy and harmonious life only if they are able to rid themselves, within the limits of human nature, of the striving for the wish fulfillment of material kinds. The goal is to raise the spiritual values of society.

People will not disarm step by step; they will disarm at one blow or not at all.

If people are good because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed.

I believe we are here to do good. It is the responsibility of every human being to aspire to do something worthwhile, to make the world a better place than the one we found.

Development of Western science is based on two great achievements: the invention of the formal logical system (in Euclidean geometry) by the Greek philosophers, and the discovery of the possibility to find out causal relationships by systematic experiment (during the Renaissance). In my opinion, one has not to be astonished that the Chinese sages have not made these steps. The astonishing thing is that these discoveries were made at all.