As soon as questions of will or decision or reason or choice of action arise, human science is at a loss.

What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal.

To be a real philosopher all that is necessary is to hate some one else’s type of thinking.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

Men are rather reasoning than reasonable animals, for the most part governed by the impulse of passion.

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

When you give, it comes back to you.

Between stimulus and response, there is a space where we choose our response.

Can a mortal ask questions which God finds unanswerable? Quite easily, I should think. All nonsense questions are unanswerable.

Life is a series of commas, not periods.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

Every mind must make its choice between truth and repose. It cannot have both.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

I’m very careful about saying who would and wouldn’t go to heaven. I don’t know.

The most distressing thing that can happen to a prophet is to be proved wrong. The next most distressing thing is to be proved right.

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to preserve it. Has it ever been said that a man who throws himself out the window to escape from a fire is guilty of suicide?

Since God created the world, He also created reality.

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

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

If humans were totally unstructured creatures, they would be… a tool which can properly be shaped by outside forces.

To be is to do.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

Only a philosophy of eternity, in the world today, could justify non-violence.

Research is creating new knowledge.

We sail within a vast sphere, ever drifting in uncertainty, driven from end to end.

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

The church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture.

I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any.

I always wanted to do things right and represent myself as somebody that took the art serious and someone that took the business serious also, so I had time to weigh the options and figure it out and do my best to create the situation that was ideal.

Never give an order that can’t be obeyed.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

You either believe that people respond to authority, or that they respond to kindness and inclusion. I’m obviously in the latter camp. I think that people respond better to reward than punishment.

To assert in any case that a man must be absolutely cut off from society because he is absolutely evil amounts to saying that society is absolutely good, and no-one in his right mind will believe this today.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

My biographers… would like to have my time at the court almost complete before they finish the book. We decided… to flip the order.

Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf; is better than a whole loaf.

There are two ways of being happy: We must either diminish our wants or augment our means – either may do – the result is the same and it is for each man to decide for himself and to do that which happens to be easier.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

It is even better to act quickly and err than to hesitate until the time of action is past.

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

When I take action, I’m not going to fire a $2 million missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It’s going to be decisive.

In fact men will fight for a superstition quite as quickly as for a living truth – often more so, since a superstition is so intangible you cannot get at it to refute it, but truth is a point of view, and so is changeable.

Meaning and reality were not hidden somewhere behind things, they were in them, in all of them.

When I was a little girl, I always dreamed of being a star. I didn’t really know what all that meant. I didn’t know.

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

All men are equal before fish.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

A hustler has to deal with danger and risk. It’s part of the game. You cannot control it all, nor would you want to. Chaos, unknown factors are not something to be anxious about.

The natural desire of good men is knowledge.

I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.

Indecision may or may not be my problem.

Gravitation is, so far, not understandable in terms of other phenomena.

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

The superior man understands what is right; the inferior man understands what will sell.