A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged, by better information or fuller consideration, to change opinions, even on important subjects, which I once thought right but found to be otherwise.

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

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two.

The union of the Word and the Mind produces that mystery which is called Life… Learn deeply of the Mind and its mystery, for therein lies the secret of immortality.

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion.

To live is to think.

Nothing can come of nothing.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

I look upon death to be as necessary to our constitution as sleep. We shall rise refreshed in the morning.

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza’s God, it won’t love us in return.

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

I’m an expert typist. I learned in high school. I would close my eyes and just type without worrying about mistakes. I tried to penetrate my heart, and as I let my thoughts drift, things bubbled up to the surface.

The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

Necessity is blind until it becomes conscious. Freedom is the consciousness of necessity.

Anyone who is practicing understanding and compassion can exemplify true power. Anyone can be a Buddha.

One of the things that I’m very excited about with New Shepard, which is our suborbital tourism vehicle, is using that to get a lot of practice. One of the equilibria that we’re at today with space launch is that we don’t get to practice enough.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

All theory, dear friend, is gray, but the golden tree of life springs ever green.

We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.

Act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

In my opinion, there is no aspect of reality beyond the reach of the human mind.

How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

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

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

I’m such a good lover because I practice a lot on my own.

We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s ‚Pensees‘ and read, ‚I am the great silent spaces between worlds.‘

He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

The end of man is action, and not thought, though it be of the noblest.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

I read Plato’s ‚Republic.‘ I read it through about five times until I could actually understand it.

He that is giddy thinks the world turns round.

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

Don’t despair, not even over the fact that you don’t despair.

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

Communism to me is one-third practice and two-thirds explanation.

No man was ever wise by chance.

It was a favorite expression of Theophrastus that time was the most valuable thing that a man could spend.

It is more fitting for a man to laugh at life than to lament over it.

Live your life as though your every act were to become a universal law.

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.

The pendulum of the mind alternates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.