I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.

There is nothing so pitiful as a young cynic because he has gone from knowing nothing to believing nothing.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

John Kerry believes in an America where hard work is rewarded.

The human mind is our fundamental resource.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

The most effective prayers are usually the simple prayers.

I think the materialist conception of history is valid.

Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.

A man can do what he wants, but not want what he wants.

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that He exists.

It’s amazing how people will give when you don’t ask. Many of them send money because they believe in the message.

Our nature consists in motion; complete rest is death.

If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work. Much of the best work of the world has been done against seeming impossibilities. The thing is to get the work done.

Things that I felt absolutely sure of but a few years ago, I do not believe now. This thought makes me see more clearly how foolish it would be to expect all men to agree with me.

A useless life is an early death.

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any.

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in ‚renouncing‘ one’s own self, by which I mean making up one’s mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being ‚happy‘ or ‚unhappy‘ in the usual meaning of the words.

May be is very well, but Must is the master. It is my duty to show justice without recompense.

The higher the sun ariseth, the less shadow doth he cast; even so the greater is the goodness, the less doth it covet praise; yet cannot avoid its rewards in honours.

Law is mind without reason.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

If you believe in prayer at all, expect God to hear you. If you do not expect, you will not have. God will not hear you unless you believe He will hear you; but if you believe He will, He will be as good as your faith.

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

The word ‚belief‘ is a difficult thing for me. I don’t believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it – I don’t need to believe it.

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.

Theology is unnecessary.

Despair is a narcotic. It lulls the mind into indifference.

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.

Eternity is a mere moment, just long enough for a joke.

God is a great God! I want to encourage you to expect great things from Him.

I have a deep, deep belief that if I tell you I’m going to crack you with a clean shot to the chin inside one minute of the first round and you will be unconscious, well, then that’s what will happen.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

Modern science says: ‚The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.‘ From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

Those who hope for no other life are dead even for this.

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

I am certain no one sets out to be cruel, but our treatment of the elderly ill seems to have no philosophy to it. As a society, we should establish whether we have a policy of life at any cost.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

It is a common saying, and in everybody’s mouth, that life is but a sojourn.

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

Capitalism has destroyed our belief in any effective power but that of self interest backed by force.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

I shall never believe that God plays dice with the world.

I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail. There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.