All men by nature desire knowledge.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.

Men rise from one ambition to another: first, they seek to secure themselves against attack, and then they attack others.

Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

The difficulty with this conversation is that it’s very different from most of the ones I’ve had of late. Which, as I explained, have mostly been with trees.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

Intuition and concepts constitute… the elements of all our knowledge, so that neither concepts without an intuition in some way corresponding to them, nor intuition without concepts, can yield knowledge.

Belief is a wise wager. Granted that faith cannot be proved, what harm will come to you if you gamble on its truth and it proves false? If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

The advancement and diffusion of knowledge is the only guardian of true liberty.

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?

All that spirits desire, spirits attain.

The more you know the less you need to say.

A human being would certainly not grow to be seventy or eighty years old if this longevity had no meaning for the species. The afternoon of human life must also have a significance of its own and cannot be merely a pitiful appendage to life’s morning.

A wise man can learn more from a foolish question than a fool can learn from a wise answer.

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

The greater our knowledge increases the more our ignorance unfolds.

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

We seem gradually to be groping toward an understanding of the world of subatomic particles, but we really do not know how far we have yet to go in this task.

Plato was a bore.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

Love and desire are the spirit’s wings to great deeds.

Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.

It’s wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.

There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.

Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.

In much of society, research means to investigate something you do not know or understand.

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

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

Little by little, not by making big promises, I need to be calmer, read more, spend more time with my loved ones, and be more mindful about nature and environment.

Sin is geographical.

Nature gives you the face you have at twenty; it is up to you to merit the face you have at fifty.

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‚Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?‘

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

A useless life is an early death.

When you look at the sun during your walking meditation, the mindfulness of the body helps you to see that the sun is in you; without the sun there is no life at all and suddenly you get in touch with the sun in a different way.

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don’t know because we don’t want to know.

The progress of rivers to the ocean is not so rapid as that of man to error.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

We must all obey the great law of change. It is the most powerful law of nature.

I don’t watch it, but I know enough to comment on it.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

Nothing is more desirable than to be released from an affliction, but nothing is more frightening than to be divested of a crutch.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

It is not funny that anything else should fall down; only that a man should fall down. Why do we laugh? Because it is a gravely religious matter: it is the Fall of Man. Only man can be absurd: for only man can be dignified.

There is more wisdom in your body than in your deepest philosophy.

All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

There are only two kinds of people who are really fascinating – people who know absolutely everything, and people who know absolutely nothing.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

His father is governor of Media, and though he has the greatest command given him of all the rest of my generals, he still covetously desires more, and my being without issue spurs him on to this wicked design. But Philotas takes wrong measures.

Education is simply the soul of a society as it passes from one generation to another.