For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

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

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.

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?

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

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.

A prudent question is one-half of wisdom.

So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

It isn’t what we don’t know that gives us trouble, it’s what we know that ain’t so.

You are a child of the sun, you come from the sun, and that is something true with the Earth also… your relationship with the Earth is so deep, and the Earth is in you and this is something not very difficult, much less difficult then philosophy.

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

Silence is as deep as eternity, speech a shallow as time.

Experience which was once claimed by the aged is now claimed exclusively by the young.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

Being is the great explainer.

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Man was made at the end of the week’s work, when God was tired.

I do think there must be some kind of interaction between your living life and the life that goes on from here.

Death is just life’s next big adventure.

A physician without a knowledge of Astrology has no right to call himself a physician.

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

The higher a man stands, the more the word vulgar becomes unintelligible to him.

Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

Thought is the wind and knowledge the sail.

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever – this is a somewhat new kind of religion.

Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe.

If God dropped acid, would he see people?

We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.

There are some Christian people who taste and see and enjoy religion in their own souls, and who get at a deeper knowledge of it than books can ever give them, though they should search all their days.

The more extensive a man’s knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do.

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

All intelligent thoughts have already been thought; what is necessary is only to try to think them again.

I had given up some youth for knowledge, but my gain was more valuable than the loss.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

No man was ever wise by chance.

I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfil our destiny, but our fate is sealed.

The brain is wider than the sky.

I think the materialist conception of history is valid.

God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven’t and don’t.

There is not a more unhappy being than a superannuated idol.

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.

Common Sense is that which judges the things given to it by other senses.

Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.

There’s very little advice in men’s magazines, because men don’t think there’s a lot they don’t know. Women do. Women want to learn. Men think, ‚I know what I’m doing, just show me somebody naked.‘

Religion is the opium of the masses.

A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.