Fate is nothing but the deeds committed in a prior state of existence.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s ‚Pensees‘ and read, ‚I am the great silent spaces between worlds.‘

I have an existential map. It has ‚You are here‘ written all over it.

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat, – superfluous things that wear our togas theadbare, that force us to grow old in camp, that dash us upon foreign shores.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.

Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature, but he is a thinking reed.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

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.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

Upon the subjects of which I have treated, I have spoken as I have thought. I may be wrong in regard to any or all of them; but, holding it a sound maxim that it is better only sometimes to be right than at all times to be wrong, so soon as I discover my opinions to be erroneous, I shall be ready to renounce them.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

Everything in Nature contains all the powers of Nature. Everything is made of one hidden stuff.

I don’t think there is any philosophy that suggests having polio is a good thing.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

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

Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

I don’t suffer of anything that I’ve lost.

Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

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

Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs pass, so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.

No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

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

I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one’s memories.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

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.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

Character is destiny.

Reason is the enemy of faith.

Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.

It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

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

The sage does not hoard. The more he helps others, the more he benefits himself, The more he gives to others, the more he gets himself. The Way of Heaven does one good but never does one harm. The Way of the sage is to act but not to compete.

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

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

Forever is composed of nows.

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

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

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.

It’s not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren’t doing.

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

To see and listen to the wicked is already the beginning of wickedness.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.