Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.

The difference between Socrates and Jesus? The great conscious and the immeasurably great unconscious.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

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

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and establishing those properties by experiments, and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them.

Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.

Thought and theory must precede all salutary action; yet action is nobler in itself than either thought or theory.

There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are – more humane.

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.

Once spirit was God, then it became man, and now it is even becoming mob.

There is no such thing as part freedom.

We might as well die as to go on living like this.

You are the universe, you aren’t in the universe.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

There is no subject so old that something new cannot be said about it.

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

So long as the universe had a beginning, we could suppose it had a creator. But if the universe is really completely self-contained, having no boundary or edge, it would have neither beginning nor end: it would simply be. What place, then, for a creator?

Whatever must happen ultimately should happen immediately.

Change alone is unchanging.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

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

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

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

Probable impossibilities are to be preferred to improbable possibilities.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

Because people have no thoughts to deal in, they deal cards, and try and win one another’s money. Idiots!

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

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

Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet.

I can control my destiny, but not my fate. Destiny means there are opportunities to turn right or left, but fate is a one-way street. I believe we all have the choice as to whether we fulfil our destiny, but our fate is sealed.

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.

Life consists in what a man is thinking of all day.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

Out of timber so crooked as that from which man is made nothing entirely straight can be carved.

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

Having nothing, nothing can he lose.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

A jug fills drop by drop.

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect.

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

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

Religion is the impotence of the human mind to deal with occurrences it cannot understand.

The brain is wider than the sky.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

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