The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.

Good men by nature, wish to know. I know that many will call this useless work… men who desire nothing but material riches and are absolutely devoid of that of wisdom, which is the food and only true riches of the mind.

Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty.

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

Certain though I am – and ever more certain – that I must press on in life as though Christ awaited me at the term of the universe, at the same time I feel no special assurance of the existence of Christ. Believing is not seeing. As much as anyone, I imagine, I walk in the shadows of faith.

We don’t hide our space program. We don’t keep secrets and cover things up. We do it all up front and in public. That’s the way freedom is, and we wouldn’t change it for a minute.

Sin is geographical.

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it.

Do not take life too seriously. You will never get out of it alive.

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land, and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

To enjoy freedom we have to control ourselves.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.

Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.

Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.

A useless life is an early death.

The wise use of your freedom to make your own decisions is crucial to your spiritual growth, now and for eternity.

If life is a checker game, someone else is moving the pieces. It isn’t us. Don’t be surprised by amazing coincidences. There are no accidents. Consider, as I learned to do, the incredible interconnectedness of all of life.

Life is our dictionary.

Our single most important challenge is therefore to help establish a social order in which the freedom of the individual will truly mean the freedom of the individual.

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

The best argument I know for an immortal life is the existence of a man who deserves one.

Men freely believe that which they desire.

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

Freedom is not given to us by anyone; we have to cultivate it ourselves. It is a daily practice… No one can prevent you from being aware of each step you take or each breath in and breath out.

To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

We are not actually equal – humanity – if we are not allowed to freely love one another.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

In the consciousness of the truth he has perceived, man now sees everywhere only the awfulness or the absurdity of existence and loathing seizes him.

I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.

I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free.

We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems, for conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?

I don’t think that faith, whatever you’re being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained. And I don’t want to explain this whole life business through truth, science. There’s so much mystery. There’s so much awe.

The act of dying is one of the acts of life.

In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth – often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

Philosophy is common sense with big words.

Heaven is long-enduring, and earth continues long. The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure and continue thus long is because they do not live of, or for, themselves.

America is a friend to the people of Iraq. Our demands are directed only at the regime that enslaves them and threatens us. When these demands are met, the first and greatest benefit will come to Iraqi men, women and children.

The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.

Freedom from effort in the present merely means that there has been effort stored up in the past.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I’m blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.