Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all.

Two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex.

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

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

When a man bleeds inwardly, it is a dangerous thing for himself; but when he laughs inwardly, it bodes no good to other people.

Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.

What constitutes a real, live human being is more of a mystery than ever these days, and men each one of whom is a valuable, unique experiment on the part of nature are shot down wholesale.

There is but an inch of difference between a cushioned chamber and a padded cell.

There is nothing permanent except change.

Every people have gods to suit their circumstances.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

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

Necessity is not an established fact, but an interpretation.

What then is freedom? The power to live as one wishes.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?

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

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

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.

There’s just some magic in truth and honesty and openness.

It is a mania shared by philosophers of all ages to deny what exists and to explain what does not exist.

I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.

The kind of fiction I’m trying to write is about telling the truth.

Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

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

You are doomed to make choices. This is life’s greatest paradox.

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

The most common criticism I get is that I’m being manipulated and you shouldn’t use children in political ways, because that is abuse, and I can’t think for myself and so on. And I think that is so annoying! I’m also allowed to have a say – why shouldn’t I be able to form my own opinion and try to change people’s minds?

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

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

We often want one thing and pray for another, not telling the truth even to the gods.

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.

I would rather live my life as if there is a God and die to find out there isn’t, than live as if there isn’t and to die to find out that there is.

Nothing cannot exist forever.

Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

For where God built a church, there the Devil would also build a chapel.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger portion of the truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

The reason that fiction is more interesting than any other form of literature, to those who really like to study people, is that in fiction the author can really tell the truth without humiliating himself.

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

If you have enough people sitting around telling you you’re wonderful, then you start believing you’re fabulous, then someone tells you you stink and you believe that too!

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is mere intellectual play.

All the religions of the world, while they may differ in other respects, unitedly proclaim that nothing lives in this world but Truth.

As the biggest library if it is in disorder is not as useful as a small but well-arranged one, so you may accumulate a vast amount of knowledge but it will be of far less value than a much smaller amount if you have not thought it over for yourself.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.

I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective.