Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet.

I wish I had known when I was in the White House what I know now about the Third World.

Nothing is so good as it seems beforehand.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

The world is like a grand staircase, some are going up and some are going down.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

The less you know, the more you believe.

If you can feel that Mother Earth is in you, and you are Mother Earth, then you are not any longer afraid to die because the earth is not dying. Like a wave appears and disappears and appears again.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

The brain is wider than the sky.

I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.

When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

The truth. It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and must therefore be treated with great caution.

The truth is of course is that there is no journey. We are arriving and departing all at the same time.

What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

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.

It is a profound and necessary truth that the deep things in science are not found because they are useful; they were found because it was possible to find them.

Nature hath framed strange fellows in her time.

Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.

We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from… Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.

But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

I had rather excel others in the knowledge of what is excellent, than in the extent of my power and dominion.

Truth is mysterious, elusive, always to be conquered. Liberty is dangerous, as hard to live with as it is elating. We must march toward these two goals, painfully but resolutely, certain in advance of our failings on so long a road.

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.

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

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

A man will turn over half a library to make one book.

I did not wish to take a cabin passage, but rather to go before the mast and on the deck of the world, for there I could best see the moonlight amid the mountains. I do not wish to go below now.

I believe Karl Marx could have subscribed to the Sermon on the Mount.

Who would set a limit to the mind of man? Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

A trifle consoles us, for a trifle distresses us.

I owe the best of myself to geology, but everything it has taught me tends to turn me away from dead things.

It is dangerous for mortal beauty, or terrestrial virtue, to be examined by too strong a light. The torch of Truth shows much that we cannot, and all that we would not, see.

Nothing cannot exist forever.

Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true and, in the case of the human heart, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler.

A first sign of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die.

No one’s policing their own minds more than an author. You spend a lot of time in your own head analysing what you think about things, and a philosophy comes.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

Know then this truth, enough for man to know virtue alone is happiness below.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.

Death, like birth, is a secret of Nature.

Sensual love deceives one as to the nature of heavenly love; it could not do so alone, but since it unconsciously has the element of heavenly love within it, it can do so.

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

Don’t look forward to the day you stop suffering, because when it comes you’ll know you’re dead.

When you know a thing, to hold that you know it, and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it – this is knowledge.

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

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

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

You don’t have to be scared of me, because I am loyal. Why are people so scared of creative ideas and so scared of truth? All I want to do is do good.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

I want to know why the universe exists, why there is something greater than nothing.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

There’s a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure the truth.

If I err in belief that the souls of men are immortal, I gladly err, nor do I wish this error which gives me pleasure to be wrested from me while I live.