All men by nature desire knowledge.

The American doctor, in my opinion, possesses a combination of conservatism and that other quality which has put the United States in the forefront in almost every department of science – that is, an eagerness to know what it is really all about in order that he may not be the one left behind if there is something to it.

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

Have you ever watched a crab on the shore crawling backward in search of the Atlantic Ocean, and missing? That’s the way the mind of man operates.

One of the great questions of philosophy is, do we innately have morality, or do we get it from celestial dictation? A study of the Ten Commandments is a very good way of getting into and resolving that issue.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

Many admire, few know.

All cartoon characters and fables must be exaggeration, caricatures. It is the very nature of fantasy and fable.

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

I believe things cannot make themselves impossible.

Rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.

If you really want to know what Middle-earth is based on, it’s my wonder and delight in the earth as it is, particularly the natural earth.

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.

Only by going alone in silence, without baggage, can one truly get into the heart of the wilderness. All other travel is mere dust and hotels and baggage and chatter.

You know, nothing is more important than education, because nowhere are our stakes higher; our future depends on the quality of education of our children today.

Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.

Plato is my friend; Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

The superior man thinks always of virtue; the common man thinks of comfort.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

I am a little too absorbed by science to be able to philosophise much; but the more I look into myself, the more I find myself possessed by the conviction that it is only the science of Christ running through all things, that is to say true mystical science, that really matters. I let myself get caught up in the game when I geologise.

What women need to understand is that men don’t communicate. It’s not intentional or on purpose. We’re just not as emotional. You ladies feel like you have to express yourselves.

When I did A Soldier’s Story, I was very young and green and thought I knew everything-now I know I know everything!

I’m not denyin‘ the women are foolish. God Almighty made ‚em to match the men.

Fear is the mother of morality.

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

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

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

The desire for possession is insatiable, to such a point that it can survive even love itself. To love, therefore, is to sterilize the person one loves.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

The object of the superior man is truth.

He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

Will and intellect are one and the same thing.

Small amounts of philosophy lead to atheism, but larger amounts bring us back to God.

Nature is our eldest mother; she will do no harm.

I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.

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

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality.

When the oak is felled the whole forest echoes with it fall, but a hundred acorns are sown in silence by an unnoticed breeze.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

You could not step twice into the same rivers; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

Men hate the individual whom they call avaricious only because nothing can be gained from him.

Life is a progress from want to want, not from enjoyment to enjoyment.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

There are no moral phenomena at all, but only a moral interpretation of phenomena.

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

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.

I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.