Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

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.

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful: they are found because it was possible to find them.

The good is the beautiful.

Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare – something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state – something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.

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

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.

A person is a person because he recognizes others as persons.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

That’s another hallmark of truth, is that it snaps things together. People write to me all the time and say it’s as if things were coming together in my mind. It’s like the Platonic idea that all learning was remembering. You have a nature, and when you feel that nature articulated, it’s it’s like the act of snapping the puzzle pieces together.

‚Tis better to bear the ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.

The man never feels the want of what it never occurs to him to ask for.

What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put something before us to prevent us seeing it.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

It’s really easy to have a nice philosophy about openness, but moving the world in that direction is a different thing. It requires both understanding where you want to go and being pragmatic about getting there.

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

The brain is wider than the sky.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.

Frankly, I think that the news industry is critically important because it points out things and surfaces truths that can often be uncomfortable. I think that that’s working, and the spotlight has been pointed on things that we have a responsibility to do better, and I accept that.

I do not know whether there are gods, but there ought to be.

The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.

A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

There is another old poet whose name I do not now remember who said, ‚Truth is the daughter of Time.‘

It is as necessary for man to live in beauty rather than ugliness as it is necessary for him to have food for an aching belly or rest for a weary body.

He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.

Wisdom allows nothing to be good that will not be so forever; no man to be happy but he that needs no other happiness than what he has within himself; no man to be great or powerful that is not master of himself.

Chaos is inherent in all compounded things. Strive on with diligence.

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

Who is the wisest man? He who neither knows or wishes for anything else than what happens.

We occasionally stumble over the truth but most of us pick ourselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

Truth is so hard to tell, it sometimes needs fiction to make it plausible.

All human laws are, properly speaking, only declaratory; they have no power over the substance of original justice.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

I know that campaigns can seem small, and even silly. Trivial things become big distractions. Serious issues become sound bites. And the truth gets buried under an avalanche of money and advertising. If you’re sick of hearing me approve this message, believe me – so am I.

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain’t so.

The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.

I’m fascinated by the fact that we can’t grasp anything about time.

Where there is shouting, there is no true knowledge.

We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy.

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that’s how we’ve got to live.

We must conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members.

A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.

Anyone who doesn’t take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

Reality is a sliding door.

Half a truth is often a great lie.

It is beyond a doubt that all our knowledge begins with experience.

There is only one failure in life possible, and that is not to be true to the best one knows.