If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

I’m fascinated by the fact that we can’t grasp anything about time.

All the interests of my reason, speculative as well as practical, combine in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What ought I to do? 3. What may I hope?

As soon as there is life there is danger.

What we live by we die by.

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

By staying focused on what I intend to create, by believing that the universe is all-providing, and by knowing that I’m worthy of the unlimited beneficence of the Source of being, I just keep attracting prosperity to me.

It’s possible – you can never know – that the universe exists only for me. If so, it’s sure going well for me, I must admit.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

With a tree, all the growth takes place at the growing tips. Humanity is exactly the same. All the growth takes place in the growing tip: among that one percent of the population. It’s made up of pioneers, the beginners. That’s where the action is.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

If life is a checker game, someone else is moving the pieces. It isn’t us. Don’t be surprised by amazing coincidences. There are no accidents. Consider, as I learned to do, the incredible interconnectedness of all of life.

World belongs to humanity, not this leader, that leader or that king or prince or religious leader. World belongs to humanity.

If I seem to boast more than is becoming, my excuse is that I brag for humanity rather than for myself.

Ignorant people see life as either existence or non-existence, but wise men see it beyond both existence and non-existence to something that transcends them both; this is an observation of the Middle Way.

There is no such thing as justice in the abstract; it is merely a compact between men.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

I think being an atheist is something you are, not something you do.

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

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

I draw from the Absurd three consequences: my revolt, my liberty, my passion.

We must conceive of this whole universe as one commonwealth of which both gods and men are members.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Theology is unnecessary.

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

Virtue is relative to the actions and ages of each of us in all that we do.

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

Throughout history, people have studied pure science from a desire to understand the universe rather than practical applications for commercial gain. But their discoveries later turned out to have great practical benefits.

We think we have solved the mystery of creation. Maybe we should patent the universe and charge everyone royalties for their existence.

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

There is nothing, Sir, too little for so little a creature as man. It is by studying little things that we attain the great art of having as little misery and as much happiness as possible.

The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.

Before we understand science, it is natural to believe that God created the universe.

He who knows nothing is closer to the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone, you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

I don’t believe in death, neither in flesh nor in spirit.

Humanity, you never had it to begin with.

Sleep is the interest we have to pay on the capital which is called in at death; and the higher the rate of interest and the more regularly it is paid, the further the date of redemption is postponed.

I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.

There is a road from the eye to heart that does not go through the intellect.

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

Life is our dictionary.

There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war.

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.

We moralize among ruins.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Evolution can go to hell as far as I am concerned. What a mistake we are. We have mortally wounded this sweet life-supporting planet – the only one in the whole Milky Way – with a century of transportation whoopee.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

There is no logical way to the discovery of these elemental laws. There is only the way of intuition, which is helped by a feeling for the order lying behind the appearance.

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.

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it.

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.