I think that man has a fundamental obligation to extract from himself and from the earth all that it can give; and this obligation is all the more imperative that we are absolutely ignorant of what limits – they may still be very distant – God has imposed on our natural understanding and power.

When ignorance gets started it knows no bounds.

When you give everyone a voice and give people power, the system usually ends up in a really good place. So, what we view our role as, is giving people that power.

Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.

Is it ignorance or apathy? Hey, I don’t know and I don’t care.

Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you.

A man does not know what he is saying until he knows what he is not saying.

I think God’s going to come down and pull civilization over for speeding.

The will is a beast of burden. If God mounts it, it wishes and goes as God wills; if Satan mounts it, it wishes and goes as Satan wills; Nor can it choose its rider… the riders contend for its possession.

God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger.

It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

These poems, with all their crudities, doubts, and confusions, are written for the love of Man and in praise of God, and I’d be a damn‘ fool if they weren’t.

Science is nothing but perception.

Nature, like man, sometimes weeps from gladness.

Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.

I don’t spend that much time being introspective, believe it or not. All I know is that I grew up not questioning God because that’s how you are. God was there like the birds and the wind.

It’s a curse. I ask God to take this away from me all the time. I do not like being an artist.

I prefer tongue-tied knowledge to ignorant loquacity.

This man used to go to school with his dog. Then they were separated. His dog graduated!

God is the name people give to the reason we are here. But I think that reason is the laws of physics rather than someone with whom one can have a personal relationship. An impersonal God.

I believe that God put us in this jolly world to be happy and enjoy life.

In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.

What we call Man’s power over Nature turns out to be a power exercised by some men over other men with Nature as its instrument.

Resistance is feasible even for those who are not heroes by nature, and it is an obligation, I believe, for those who fear the consequences and detest the reality of the attempt to impose American hegemony.

A man cannot become an atheist merely by wishing it.

It’s really easy to have a nice philosophy about openness, but moving the world in that direction is a different thing. It requires both understanding where you want to go and being pragmatic about getting there.

Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.

You pity the fool because you don’t want to beat up a fool! You know, pity is between sorry and mercy. See, if you pity him, you know, you won’t have to beat him up. So that’s why I say fools, you gotta give another chance because they don’t know no better. That’s why I pity them!

I never had that feeling that I had to carry the weight of somebody’s ignorance around with me. And that was true for racists who wanted to use the ‚n‘ word when talking about me or about my people, or the stupidity of people who really wanted to belittle other folks because they weren’t pretty or they weren’t rich or they weren’t clever.

No better way is there to learn to love Nature than to understand Art. It dignifies every flower of the field. And, the boy who sees the thing of beauty which a bird on the wing becomes when transferred to wood or canvas will probably not throw the customary stone.

God not only plays dice, but also sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.

God is the indwelling and not the transient cause of all things.

I feel like my message is to let people know that God is a good God, that He’s on their side, and no matter what happens, He has a great plan for them.

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

God is a concept by which we measure our pain.

My religion encompasses all religions. I believe in God, I believe in the universe. I believe you are god, I believe I am god; I believe the earth is god and the universe is god. We’re all god.

Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.

It’s hard for me to grasp the concept of somebody being nervous when I’m talking to them.

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

I realized the power of hip-hop. I realized how influential this music and this culture are.

God and I have a great relationship, but we both see other people.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

The point – the power to hurt – of all figures lies in the truthfulness of their application.

God’s mercy is fresh and new every morning.

The greatest thing in family life is to take a hint when a hint is intended-and not to take a hint when a hint isn’t intended.

Martyrs, my friend, have to choose between being forgotten, mocked or used. As for being understood – never.

Man can be understood only by ascending from physics, chemistry, biology, and geology. In other words, he is first of all a cosmic problem.

The three most powerful and most apparent means used by Rome to retain her power over the minds of her votaries are Ignorance, Superstition, and Persecution.

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.

God made the Idiot for practice, and then He made the School Board.

Ambition is the immoderate desire for power.

It’s wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears.

Concern for man and his fate must always form the chief interest of all technical endeavors. Never forget this in the midst of your diagrams and equations.

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?

We have one planet in our solar system that’s habitable, and that’s the Earth, and space travel can transform things back here for the better. First of all, by just having people go to space and look back on this fragile planet we live on. People have come back transformed and have done fantastic things.

The less effort, the faster and more powerful you will be.

If you were to ask me to choose between democratic values and wealth, power, prosperity and fame, I will very easily and without any doubt choose democratic values.

A clever man commits no minor blunders.

I think we have to own the fears that we have of each other, and then, in some practical way, some daily way, figure out how to see people differently than the way we were brought up to.