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

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed.

If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

All truth is simple… is that not doubly a lie?

Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein’s general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

It always seems to me so odd that when a man dies, he takes out with him all the knowledge that he has got in his lifetime whilst sowing his wild oats or winning successes. And he leaves his sons or younger brothers to go through all the work of learning it over again from their own experience.

Lying in bed would be an altogether perfect and supreme experience if only one had a colored pencil long enough to draw on the ceiling.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

I’ve been everywhere in the world, seen everything, had everything a man can have.

I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power.

You don’t even really need a place. But you feel like you’re doing something. That is what coffee is. And that is one of the geniuses of the new coffee culture.

God cannot be realized through the intellect. Intellect can lead one to a certain extent and no further. It is a matter of faith and experience derived from that faith.

I have trouble reading modern Hebrew. In the 1950s, I could read anything. I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with contemporary Hebrew. It’s quite difficult.

In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.

One and the same thing can at the same time be good, bad, and indifferent, e.g., music is good to the melancholy, bad to those who mourn, and neither good nor bad to the deaf.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

Everyone knows nowadays that people ‚have complexes‘. What is not so well known, though far more important theoretically, is that complexes can have us.

Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

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

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

The formula ‚Two and two make five‘ is not without its attractions.

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‚War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.‘

For an occurrence to become an adventure, it is necessary and sufficient for one to recount it.

I spent two years in the military service, then I trudged around in repertory for quite a while. I somehow wound up at the National Theatre, though, and then I was definitely on my way.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

The highest proof of the spirit is love. Love the eternal thing which can already on earth possess as it really is.

All difficult things have their origin in that which is easy, and great things in that which is small.

At the heart of the Irish economy has always been the philosophy of tax competitiveness. On the cranky left, that is very annoying; I can see that.

Nothing can be divided into more parts than it can possibly be constituted of. But matter (i.e. finite) cannot be constituted of infinite parts.

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

I’ve done auditions where the casting director is taking the paper out of my hand in the middle of reading.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

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.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

Man was made at the end of the week’s work, when God was tired.

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

A belief in hell and the knowledge that every ambition is doomed to frustration at the hands of a skeleton have never prevented the majority of human beings from behaving as though death were no more than an unfounded rumor.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

Religions get lost as people do.

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.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

Thought is the wind and knowledge the sail.

One that confounds good and evil is an enemy to good.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one’s temper and disturb one’s quiet.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes‘ palaces.