I call him free who is led solely by reason.

Nothing can cure the soul but the senses, just as nothing can cure the senses but the soul.

It is the fight alone that pleases us, not the victory.

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.

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

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

I’m an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call ‚the last illusion.‘ The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what’s going on but that the planets know what’s going on.

I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.

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

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

Falsehood is a perennial spring.

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

Nature is an infinite sphere of which the center is everywhere and the circumference nowhere.

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

The finite is annihilated in the presence of the infinite, and becomes a pure nothing. So our spirit before God, so our justice before divine justice.

Modern science says: ‚The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.‘ From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

What we need is a system of thought – you might even call it a religion – that can bind humans together. A system that would fit the Republic of Chad as well as the United States: a system that would supply our idealistic young people with something to believe in.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

The art of living is more like wrestling than dancing.

Susceptibility to the highest forces is the highest genius.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

Ah, mon cher, for anyone who is alone, without God and without a master, the weight of days is dreadful.

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

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.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

That government is best which governs least.

Law is mind without reason.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

To eat is to appropriate by destruction.

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

The paradox of courage is that a man must be a little careless of his life even in order to keep it.

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 no such thing as Something for nothing.

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

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

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.

Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

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

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

An overflow of good converts to bad.

To do nothing is also a good remedy.

You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.

He who gives away shall have real gain. He who subdues himself shall be free; he shall cease to be a slave of passions. The righteous man casts off evil, and by rooting out lust, bitterness, and illusion do we reach Nirvana.

What’s the good of drawing in the next breath if all you do is let it out and draw in another?

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

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

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

I think that God gives you your own will and choices. I don’t believe that we’re supposed to drag ourselves through life defeated and not see God’s blessings. But you have to make the right choices and follow that still, small voice within you. Because I think that’s how God leads us.