If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

I think feminists are unaware of the tremendous extent of the role of women in history.

What we live by we die by.

I happen to believe there is evil in the world.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

Every spirit makes its house, and we can give a shrewd guess from the house to the inhabitant.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

They say the universe is expanding. That should help with the traffic.

Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the drug store, but that’s just peanuts to space.

Life is warfare.

A rooster crows only when it sees the light. Put him in the dark and he’ll never crow. I have seen the light and I’m crowing.

When you’re drowning, you don’t say ‚I would be incredibly pleased if someone would have the foresight to notice me drowning and come and help me,‘ you just scream.

In a certain sense the Good is comfortless.

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

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

It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a homogeneous representation of the universe. We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.

Theology is unnecessary.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.

Life tends to be an accumulation of a lot of mundane decisions, which often gets ignored.

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.

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.

Do not keep saying to yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‚But how can it be like that?‘ because you will get ‚down the drain,‘ into a blind alley from which nobody has yet escaped. Nobody knows how it can be like that.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

Knowledge which is divorced from justice, may be called cunning rather than wisdom.

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

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.

Tolerance is the virtue of the man without convictions.

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.

What people see on court is another side of me; it’s not me.

People wonder aloud about whether I am an okay mother. That is obviously painful because it’s so important to me. It’s hard to hear that people think I’m not a capable mother and a good person, that they just think I’m nuts.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

Suppose you could gain everything in the whole world, and lost your soul. Was it worth it?

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

Truth is what works.

He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.

Premature certainty is the enemy of the truth.

I’d go from film to film and almost detach from one world and jump in another. I was living as these people and not having a self. I didn’t know who I was. And things just get really dark.

Information is not knowledge.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

A lot of people are realizing they had the wool pulled over their eyes by Obama.

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

Lo! The poor Indian, whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, or hears him in the wind.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s freedom after it.

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

Better to have beasts that let themselves be killed than men who run away.

If there is a transmigration of souls then I am not yet on the bottom rung. My life is a hesitation before birth.

The advice that is wanted is commonly not welcome and that which is not wanted, evidently an effrontery.