Fanatics are picturesque, mankind would rather see gestures than listen to reasons.

Religion, born of the earth’s need for the disclosing of a god, is related to and co-extensive with not the individual man, but the whole of mankind.

Would that I were a dry well, and that the people tossed stones into me, for that would be easier than to be a spring of flowing water that the thirsty pass by, and from which they avoid drinking.

Your philosophy determines whether you will go for the disciplines or continue the errors.

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

Truth, being limitless, unconditioned, unapproachable by any path whatsoever, cannot be organized; nor should any organization be formed to lead or to coerce people along any particular path. If you first understand that, then you will see how impossible it is to organize a belief.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

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.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

Change alone is unchanging.

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

I still live, I still think: I still have to live, for I still have to think.

Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

You cannot step into the same river twice.

The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.

We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy.

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

Compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself to mankind.

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

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

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

I conceive that the great part of the miseries of mankind are brought upon them by false estimates they have made of the value of things.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

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

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

General consultant to mankind.

Now financial liberalization is just a catastrophe waiting to happen, and there are very well understood reasons for that.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

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

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms – in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.

Knowledge is true opinion.

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

A state arises, as I conceive, out of the needs of mankind; no one is self-sufficing, but all of us have many wants.

Sin is geographical.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.

I’m fascinated by the fact that we can’t grasp anything about time.

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

In order to exist just once in the world, it is necessary never again to exist.

Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.

It disturbs me no more to find men base, unjust, or selfish than to see apes mischievous, wolves savage, or the vulture ravenous.

I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one’s temper and disturb one’s quiet.

Which death is preferably to every other? ‚The unexpected‘.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

My theory has always been, that if we are to dream, the flatteries of hope are as cheap, and pleasanter, than the gloom of despair.

My philosophy is: It’s none of my business what people say of me and think of me.