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.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

The earth is supported by the power of truth; it is the power of truth that makes the sun shine and the winds blow; indeed all things rest upon truth.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

One friend in a lifetime is much, two are many, three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

Mysteries are not necessarily miracles.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

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

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

Perhaps I know best why it is man alone who laughs; he alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter.

Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, I must have read a whole library.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

I still think like a Marxist in many ways.

A jug fills drop by drop.

A loving heart is the beginning of all knowledge.

By all means, marry. If you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

To live is to think.

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.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

No one lives long enough to learn everything they need to learn starting from scratch. To be successful, we absolutely, positively have to find people who have already paid the price to learn the things that we need to learn to achieve our goals.

I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.

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

What we need is a system of thought – you might even call it a religion – that can bind humans together. A system that would fit the Republic of Chad as well as the United States: a system that would supply our idealistic young people with something to believe in.

A man who suffers before it is necessary, suffers more than is necessary.

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?

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

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.

I had a project for my life which involved 10 years of wandering, then some years of medical studies and, if any time was left, the great adventure of physics.

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.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent our necks before emperors. But today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love.

The good opinion of mankind, like the lever of Archimedes, with the given fulcrum, moves the world.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

The good is the beautiful.

As commanders and staff officers, we are coaches and sentries for our units: how can we coach anything if we don’t know a hell of a lot more than just the TTPs?

Facts are stubborn things.

Beauty is unbearable, drives us to despair, offering us for a minute the glimpse of an eternity that we should like to stretch out over the whole of time.

There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

Such is the feebleness of humanity, such is its perversity, that doubtless it is better for it to be subject to all possible superstitions, as long as they are not murderous, than to live without religion.

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

I want to know why the universe exists, why there is something greater than nothing.

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

There are only the pursued, the pursuing, the busy and the tired.

Heaven is long-enduring, and earth continues long. The reason why heaven and earth are able to endure and continue thus long is because they do not live of, or for, themselves.

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.

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

Religions get lost as people do.