To discover and know has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can we not recognize it already in caveman?

It’s a fundamental, social attitude that the 1% supports symphonies and operas and doesn’t support Johnny learning to program hip-hop beats. When I put it like that, it sounds like, ‚Well, yeah,‘ but you start to think, ‚Why not, though?‘ What makes one more valuable than another?

I’d like to be the last person alive in the world! Yes, I’d like to know what happens.

If money is your hope for independence you will never have it. The only real security that a man will have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience, and ability.

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

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

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

America is becoming so educated that ignorance will be a novelty. I will belong to the select few.

It was wonderful to find America, but it would have been more wonderful to miss it.

Beauty is a manifestation of secret natural laws, which otherwise would have been hidden from us forever.

Education is not merely neglected in many of our schools today, but is replaced to a great extent by ideological indoctrination.

When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.

Science is but an image of the truth.

From the point of view of basic physics, the most interesting phenomena are, of course, in the new places, the places where the rules do not work – not the places where they do work! That is the way in which we discover new rules.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

A capacity, and taste, for reading gives access to whatever has already been discovered by others.

We must cultivate our own garden. When man was put in the garden of Eden he was put there so that he should work, which proves that man was not born to rest.

A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education.

A little learning is a dangerous thing, but we must take that risk because a little is as much as our biggest heads can hold.

I’m a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.

I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

I found that part of it towards San Salvador extending from north to south five leagues, and the other side which we coasted along, ran from east to west more than ten leagues.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

I’ve written a number of books that have to do with the evolution of humans, human intelligence, human emotions.

Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.

All men are by nature equal, made all of the same earth by one Workman; and however we deceive ourselves, as dear unto God is the poor peasant as the mighty prince.

When I was about thirteen, the library was going to get ‚Calculus for the Practical Man.‘ By this time I knew, from reading the encyclopedia, that calculus was an important and interesting subject, and I ought to learn it.

I keep working because I learn something new all the time.

Humans have certain properties and characteristics which are intrinsic to them, just as every other organism does. That’s human nature.

Many receive advice, only the wise profit from it.

Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.

It has been said that politics is the second oldest profession. I have learned that it bears a striking resemblance to the first.

One must change one’s tactics every ten years if one wishes to maintain one’s superiority.

We must accept what science tells us, that man was born from the earth. But, more logical than the scientists who lecture us, we must carry this lesson to its conclusion: that is to say, accept that man was born entirely from the world – not only his flesh and bones but his incredible power of thought.

To insult someone we call him ‚bestial. For deliberate cruelty and nature, ‚human‘ might be the greater insult.

There are trees of a thousand sorts, and all have their several fruits; and I feel the most unhappy man in the world not to know them, for I am well assured that they are all valuable. I bring home specimens of them, and also of the land.

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We’ve created life in our own image.

Of mankind we may say in general they are fickle, hypocritical, and greedy of gain.

I believe in this concept that you learn by teaching.

Human beings must be known to be loved; but Divine beings must be loved to be known.

‚I wish life was not so short,‘ he thought. ‚Languages take such a time, and so do all the things one wants to know about.‘

Some people, they take their form of working out as a religion that they think is better than everyone else’s. I’m not like that. If you have a better way to work out, and you can teach it to me, and I find it to be useful and gets me in better shape, I’m all about.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.

What religion a man holds, to what race he belongs, these things are not important; the really important thing is this knowledge: the knowledge of God’s plan for men. For God has a plan, and that plan is evolution.

A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle.

Everybody will make mistakes, and for some that mistake will rise to the level of being a crime.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

Man seems to be capable of great virtues but not of small virtues; capable of defying his torturer but not of keeping his temper.

Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.

The recipe for perpetual ignorance is: Be satisfied with your opinions and content with your knowledge.

I think the definition of a book is changing.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

I used to always sit in church looking out the windows at the boys, wondering if I could make an excuse to go out and, you know, go to the bathroom because all the outdoor toilets. But anyhow, I was only going out to see the boys.

The authority of those who teach is often an obstacle to those who want to learn.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

To endure is the first thing that a child ought to learn, and that which he will have the most need to know.

It’s human nature to not say everything that’s on your mind at the time you think it. Because we fear saying something that people will laugh at, people will think is dumb. We’re afraid of being embarrassed.