In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

I think it is a sin to look at another person as inferior to yourself because of race or because of ethnic background, and I think the greatest thing to do is to pray that God will give you love for them, and I do.

‚Evil men have no songs.‘ How is it that the Russians have songs?

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.

Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on; it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.

Love is a really scary thing, and you never know what’s going to happen. It’s one of the most beautiful things in life, but it’s one of the most terrifying. It’s worth the fear because you have more knowledge, experience, you learn from people, and you have memories.

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.

When one does away with oneself one does the most estimable thing possible: one thereby almost deserves to live.

Nature has planted in our minds an insatiable longing to see the truth.

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

The drawing teacher has this problem of communicating how to draw by osmosis and not by instruction, while the physics teacher has the problem of always teaching techniques, rather than the spirit, of how to go about solving physical problems.

Change alone is unchanging.

Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

I say there is no darkness but ignorance.

Be careful to leave your sons well instructed rather than rich, for the hopes of the instructed are better than the wealth of the ignorant.

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

Many admire, few know.

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

It is now quite lawful for a Catholic woman to avoid pregnancy by a resort to mathematics, though she is still forbidden to resort to physics or chemistry.

We’ve got to dumb America up again.

Even though God loves us, we still have a problem: sin. It’s important for us to learn how to confront sin and overcome it, because while God loves sinners, He hates sin. And He hates it because of what it does to us and how it keeps us from the abundant life Jesus died to give us.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

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

When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.

The unnatural, that too is natural.

You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.

No one undertakes research in physics with the intention of winning a prize. It is the joy of discovering something no one knew before.

You’ve got to reach a hand of friendship across the aisle and across philosophies in this country.

Philosophy begins in wonder.

In order to exist, man must rebel, but rebellion must respect the limits that it discovers in itself – limits where minds meet, and in meeting, begin to exist.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.

Unity can only be manifested by the Binary. Unity itself and the idea of Unity are already two.

Our ambition should be to rule ourselves, the true kingdom for each one of us; and true progress is to know more, and be more, and to do more.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

We are symbols, and inhabit symbols.

Take from the philosopher the pleasure of being heard and his desire for knowledge ceases.

We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.

In so far as the mind is stronger than the body, so are the ills contracted by the mind more severe than those contracted by the body.

Resistance is usually ascribed to bodies at rest, and impulse to those in motion, but motion and rest, as commonly conceived, are only relatively distinguished; nor are those bodies always truly at rest, which commonly are taken to be so.

I wish I had known when I was in the White House what I know now about the Third World.

I don’t think that faith, whatever you’re being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained. And I don’t want to explain this whole life business through truth, science. There’s so much mystery. There’s so much awe.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

If it be a sin to covet honor, I am the most offending soul.

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

Facts are stubborn things.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.

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

It is far harder to kill a phantom than a reality.

The important question is not, what will yield to man a few scattered pleasures, but what will render his life happy on the whole amount.

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.