In the matter of a difficult question it is more likely that the truth should have been discovered by the few than by the many.

So far, I have been a spectator in this theater which is the world, but I am now about to mount the stage, and I come forward masked.

The chief cause of human errors is to be found in the prejudices picked up in childhood.

How do we know that anything really exists, that anything is really the way it seems ot us through our senses?

With me, everything turns into mathematics.

My third maxim was to try always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and to change my desires rather than the order of the world, and generally to accustom myself to believing that there is nothing entirely in our power except our thoughts, so that after we have done our best regarding things external to us, everything in which we do not succeed is for us absolutely impossible.

Conquer yourself rather than the world.