So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

There are various eyes. Even the Sphinx has eyes: and as a result there are various truths, and as a result there is no truth.

What goes up must come down.

If anything is certain, it is that I myself am not a Marxist.

Love in all its subtleties is nothing more, and nothing less, than the more or less direct trace marked on the heart of the element by the psychical convergence of the universe upon itself.

One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

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

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

God, our Creator, has stored within our minds and personalities, great potential strength and ability. Prayer helps us tap and develop these powers.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

The lie is a condition of life.

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

Words are loaded pistols.

I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.

I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.

The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

I had therefore to remove knowledge, in order to make room for belief.

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

Premature certainty is the enemy of the truth.

Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator.

Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing.

Justice… is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed.

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe.

I do not believe in a fate that falls on men however they act; but I do believe in a fate that falls on them unless they act.

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

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

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

There was something undifferentiated and yet complete, which existed before Heaven and Earth. Soundless and formless, it depends on nothing and does not change. It operates everywhere and is free from danger. It may be considered the mother of the universe. I do not know its name; I call it Tao.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by somekind of cosmic lawgiver.

Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s freedom after it.

I don’t pretend to understand the Universe – it’s a great deal bigger than I am.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

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

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

What is imponderable in the world is greater than what we can handle.

I think it quite likely that we are the only civilization within several hundred light years; otherwise we would have heard radio waves.

Perplexity is the beginning of knowledge.

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

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?