I don’t pretend to understand the Universe – it’s a great deal bigger than I am.

The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God’s universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves.

Consider, when you are enraged at any one, what you would probably think if he should die during the dispute.

When you’re born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you’re born in America, you get a front row seat.

Leaders who fail to prune their pride will meet demise. That’s not a guess, it’s a guarantee. With pride, it’s not a matter of ‚if‘ we will fall, but ‚when.‘ There are no exceptions.

To understand a name you must be acquainted with the particular of which it is a name.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

If one by one we counted people out For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.

Instead of comparing our lot with that of those who are more fortunate than we are, we should compare it with the lot of the great majority of our fellow men. It then appears that we are among the privileged.

There are worse things in life than death. Have you ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman?

I think the tiniest little thing can change the course of your day, which can change the course of your year, which can change who you are.

Let man live at a distance from God, and the universe remains neutral or hostile to him. But let man believe in God, and immediately all around him the elements, even the irksome, of the inevitable organize themselves into a friendly whole, ordered to the ultimate success of life.

I long for the time when all human history is taught as one history, because it really is.

Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

To understand Europe, you have to be a genius – or French.

A man should always consider how much he has more than he wants.

When thou art above measure angry, bethink thee how momentary is man’s life.

There is always another way to say the same thing that doesn’t look at all like the way you said it before. I don’t know what the reason for this is. I think it is somehow a representation of the simplicity of nature.

Don’t be afraid to see what you see.

I am a writer of books in retrospect. I talk in order to understand; I teach in order to learn.

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.

Faith indeed tells what the senses do not tell, but not the contrary of what they see. It is above them and not contrary to them.

It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to do, that makes life blessed.

The answer I found is you stay away from the people who make fun of you, and you join these ad hoc groups who understand your craziness.

Being ‚contented‘ ought to mean in English, as it does in French, being pleased. Being content with an attic ought not to mean being unable to move from it and resigned to living in it; it ought to mean appreciating all there is in such a position.

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

Children are all foreigners.

I think the word rich is all relative.

I understood at a very early age that in nature, I felt everything I should feel in church but never did. Walking in the woods, I felt in touch with the universe and with the spirit of the universe.

My father wasn’t around when I was a kid, and I used to always say, ‚Why me? Why don’t I have a father? Why isn’t he around? Why did he leave my mother?‘ But as I got older I looked deeper and thought, ‚I don’t know what my father was going through, but if he was around all the time, would I be who I am today?‘

For the world to be interesting, you have to be manipulating it all the time.

When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really appreciates everything one does have.

Science is nothing but perception.

I hope I have helped to raise the profile of science and to show that physics is not a mystery but can be understood by ordinary people.

I like the dreams of the future better than the history of the past.

Life is never fair, and perhaps it is a good thing for most of us that it is not.

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.

I mean, I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn’t mean I don’t get frustrated in my life.

The bottom line is that everyone thinks differently.

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

The higher we are placed, the more humbly we should walk.

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn’t live past 30.

Life would pall if it were all sugar; salt is bitter if taken by itself; but when tasted as part of the dish, it savours the meat. Difficulties are the salt of life.

It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more.

To understand the power of the priesthood, we must know its limitations.

Showing off is the fool’s idea of glory.

It’s very hard for our parents who see us enter a world that they can’t imagine.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

Things that I felt absolutely sure of but a few years ago, I do not believe now. This thought makes me see more clearly how foolish it would be to expect all men to agree with me.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else’s head instead of with one’s own.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

The universe is governed by science. But science tells us that we can’t solve the equations, directly in the abstract.

You know when you’re young and you see a play in high school, and the guys all have gray in their hair and they’re trying to be old men and they have no idea what that’s like? It’s just that stupid the other way around.

I’d rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right.

I believe God wants you to have money to pay your bills, send your kids to college and do charity work and build orphanages. There’s the teaching that we’re supposed to be poor to show that we’re humble. I don’t buy that. I think we’re supposed to be leaders. We’re supposed to excel.

A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

Things have never been more like the way they are today in history.