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.

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

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

I am a nuclear physicist by training and a deeply committed Christian. I don’t have any doubt in my own mind about God who created the entire universe. But I don’t adhere to passages that so and so was created 4,000 years before Christ, and things of that kind.

The universe is not indifferent to our existence – it depends on it.

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

From my standpoint, being an artist, I want to see what the new construction is between artist and audience.

What’s the good of drawing in the next breath if all you do is let it out and draw in another?

I’m convinced that no one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

Man’s true nature being lost, everything becomes his nature; as, his true good being lost, everything becomes his good.

A stair not worn hollow by footsteps is, regarded from its own point of view, only a boring something made of wood.

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.

I think it quite likely that we are the only civilization within several hundred light years; otherwise we would have heard radio waves.

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

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.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

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.

I walk every day, and I look at the mountains and the fields and the small city, and I say: ‚Oh my God, what a blessing.‘ Then you realise it’s important to put it in a context beyond this woman, this man, this city, this country, this universe.

Why do I not seek some real good; one which I could feel, not one which I could display?

Men seldom, or rather never for a length of time and deliberately, rebel against anything that does not deserve rebelling against.

I think that as you grow up, as you get older, we can’t get bitter, we can’t get jaded.

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.

Boredom is just the reverse side of fascination: both depend on being outside rather than inside a situation, and one leads to the other.

When you give, it comes back to you.

Our soul is cast into a body, where it finds number, time, dimension. Thereupon it reasons, and calls this nature necessity, and can believe nothing else.

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

It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure on the world.

We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.

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

I do not concern myself with gods and spirits either good or evil nor do I serve any.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

I did used to have nightmares about the idea that when I die, there is a spark of consciousness which basically creates the world. ‚Is the world going to disappear if this spark of consciousness disappears? And how do I know it won’t? How do I know there’s anything there except what I’m conscious of?‘

I never think about myself as an artist working in this time. I think about it in macro.

The eye of a human being is a microscope, which makes the world seem bigger than it really is.

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

Men exist for the sake of one another.

Too much of what is called ‚education‘ is little more than an expensive isolation from reality.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

The traveler sees what he sees, the tourist sees what he has come to see.

Growing old is like being increasingly penalized for a crime you haven’t committed.

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.

If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion.

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

Changing is not just changing the things outside of us. First of all we need the right view that transcends all notions including of being and non-being, creator and creature, mind and spirit. That kind of insight is crucial for transformation and healing.

It is natural to die as to be born.

Humans are amphibians – half spirit and half animal. As spirits they belong to the eternal world, but as animals they inhabit time.

Things ain’t what they used to be and never were.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.

Look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see, and wonder about what makes the universe exist. Be curious.

If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

I don’t think culture is something you can describe.