Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

But I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.

It is with trifles, and when he is off guard, that a man best reveals his character.

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

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

Immaturity is the incapacity to use one’s intelligence without the guidance of another.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

The proper study of Man is anything but Man; and the most improper job of any man, even saints (who at any rate were at least unwilling to take it on), is bossing other men. Not one in a million is fit for it, and least of all those who seek the opportunity.

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

How can one preach goodness and love to men without at the same time offering them an interpretation of the World that justifies this goodness and this love?

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

The human race is governed by its imagination.

Philosophically considered, the universe is composed of Nature and the Soul. Strictly speaking, therefore, all that is separate from us, all which Philosophy distinguishes as the ‚Not Me,‘ that is, both nature and art, all other men and my own body, must be ranked under this name, ‚Nature.‘

The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

The brain is wider than the sky.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

It’s really easy to have a nice philosophy about openness, but moving the world in that direction is a different thing. It requires both understanding where you want to go and being pragmatic about getting there.

Our desires always disappoint us; for though we meet with something that gives us satisfaction, yet it never thoroughly answers our expectation.

My mother’s love has always been a sustaining force for our family, and one of my greatest joys is seeing her integrity, her compassion, her intelligence reflected in my daughters.

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

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world.

The way is long if one follows precepts, but short… if one follows patterns.

Change alone is eternal, perpetual, immortal.

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

Intelligence without ambition is a bird without wings.

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

The only difference between the saint and the sinner is that every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change the things which are, and to make new things like them.

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

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death.

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.

I do think there must be some kind of interaction between your living life and the life that goes on from here.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

And yet it moves.

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

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.

Man is subject to innumerable pains and sorrows by the very condition of humanity, and yet, as if nature had not sown evils enough in life, we are continually adding grief to grief and aggravating the common calamity by our cruel treatment of one another.

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

Find enough clever things to say, and you’re a Prime Minister; write them down and you’re a Shakespeare.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing. Wager then, without hesitation, that He exists.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.