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.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

Forever is composed of nows.

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

Facts are stubborn things.

Mankind is not likely to salvage civilization unless he can evolve a system of good and evil which is independent of heaven and hell.

Our lifelong certainties about the world can be demolished in a single second.

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

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.

Why was I born with such contemporaries?

Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

When I was about thirteen, the library was going to get ‚Calculus for the Practical Man.‘ By this time I knew, from reading the encyclopedia, that calculus was an important and interesting subject, and I ought to learn it.

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.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

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 only certain freedom’s in departure.

Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.

Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

God not only plays dice, He also sometimes throws the dice where they cannot be seen.

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

Thought is the parent of the deed.

Our intention creates our reality.

He who possesses art and science has religion; he who does not possess them, needs religion.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

An overflow of good converts to bad.

God is cruel. Sometimes he makes you live.

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

It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.

Everything human is pathetic. The secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow. There is no humor in heaven.

The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

I don’t think the human mind can comprehend the past and the future. They are both just illusions that can manipulate you into thinking theres some kind of change.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

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

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

There is, so I believe, in the essence of everything, something that we cannot call learning. There is, my friend, only a knowledge – that is everywhere.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

Habit is a second nature that destroys the first. But what is nature? Why is habit not natural? I am very much afraid that nature itself is only a first habit, just as habit is a second nature.

Metaphysics is a dark ocean without shores or lighthouse, strewn with many a philosophic wreck.

History should be written as philosophy.

Egoism is the very essence of a noble soul.

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.