Leo Tolstoy Quotes

Philosophers have done wisely when they have told us to cultivate our reason rather than our feelings, for reason reconciles us to the daily things of existence; our feelings teach us to yearn after the far, the difficult, the unseen.

There are two things that you have to do in life: You have to die, and you have to live until you die. The rest is up to you.

Life is. I am. Anything might happen.

What is life but a series of inspired follies.

If one devalues rationality, the world tends to fall apart.

When I talk of the purpose of life, I am thinking not only of human life, but of all life on Earth and of the life which must exist upon other planets throughout the universe.

Reason transformed into prejudice is the worst form of prejudice, because reason is the only instrument for liberation from prejudice.

Most sets of values would give rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at that beauty.

It is only in the light of the inescapable fact of death that a person can adequately engage and enter upon the mysterious fact of life.

It is not in the world of ideas that life is lived. Life is lived for better or worse in life, and to a man in life, his life can be no more absurd than it can be the opposite of absurd, whatever that opposite may be.

Everything must justify its existence before the judgment seat of Reason, or give up existence.

Initially, I studied philosophy, because it claimed to give you answers to the meaning of existence, but it didn't: It was basically a semantics game.

Life is a horizontal fall.

Only reason can convince us of those three fundamental truths without a recognition of which there can be no effective liberty: that what we believe is not necessarily good; and that all questions are open.

Emotion is a rotten base for politics.

Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

Never prevent men from forming judgments according to their intellect

The public use of man's reason must always be free, and it alone can cause enlightenment.

Human life-everybody lives it, but only to a few is it known.

After all, what's a life, anyway? We're born, we live a little while, we die.

Our lives don't really belong to us, you see -- they belong to the world, and in spite of our efforts to make sense of it, the world is a place beyond our understanding.

The world of reason is to be regarded as a great and immortal being, who ceaselessly works out what is necessary, and so makes himself lord also over what is accidental.

Reason is the shepherd trying to corral life's vast flock of wild irrationalities.

Reason is a very light rider, and easily shook off.

It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living.