Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe.

And although our bodies are bounded with skin, and we can differentiate between outside and inside, they cannot exist except in a certain kind of natural environment.

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

Infinites, when considered absolutely without any restriction or limitation, are neither equal nor unequal, nor have any certain proportion one to another, and therefore, the principle that all infinites are equal is a precarious one.

My connection with Brazil is so abstract. My blood and my way of thinking is Brazilian, but that’s it. I don’t tend to go back to the past, and although I have an apartment there, I rarely visit. When I move, I really move.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

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.

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

I have found that no exertion of the legs can bring two minds much nearer to one another.

Eating is so intimate. It’s very sensual. When you invite someone to sit at your table and you want to cook for them, you’re inviting a person into your life.

If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.

Happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.

Taylor Swift’s audience can listen to me, but so can the street kids. I want to touch it all.

What really raises one’s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

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

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

Show me the person you honor, for I know better by that the kind of person you are. For you show me what your idea of humanity is.

I got quite annoyed after the Haiti earthquake. A baby was taken from the wreckage and people said it was a miracle. It would have been a miracle had God stopped the earthquake. More wonderful was that a load of evolved monkeys got together to save the life of a child that wasn’t theirs.

Still and all, why bother? Here’s my answer. Many people need desperately to receive this message: I feel and think much as you do, care about many of the things you care about, although most people do not care about them. You are not alone.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

We cannot conceive of matter being formed of nothing, since things require a seed to start from… Therefore there is not anything which returns to nothing, but all things return dissolved into their elements.

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

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

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

Although the most acute judges of the witches and even the witches themselves, were convinced of the guilt of witchery, the guilt nevertheless was non-existent. It is thus with all guilt.

Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

Every man casts a shadow; not his body only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit. This is his grief. Let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun; short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it?

Thoughts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind.

Law is mind without reason.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

Contradiction is not a sign of falsity, nor the lack of contradiction a sign of truth.

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

The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent.

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Heaven is dumb, echoing only the dumb.

Strong emotions such as passion and bliss are indications that you’re connected to Spirit, or ‚inspired,‘ if you will. When you’re inspired, you activate dormant forces, and the abundance you seek in any form comes streaming into your life.

The Tao teaches us not to intervene and interfere. The things we love we have to learn to leave alone. And the people we love we have to learn to let them be.

While the rest of the world has been improving technology, Ghana has been improving the quality of man’s humanity to man.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special.

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.

Science predicts that many different kinds of universe will be spontaneously created out of nothing. It is a matter of chance which we are in.

It’s not that every single thing that happens on Facebook is gonna be good. This is humanity. People use tools for good and bad, but I think that we have a clear responsibility to make sure that the good is amplified and to do everything we can to mitigate the bad.

When we understand string theory, we will know how the universe began. It won’t have much effect on how we live, but it is important to understand where we come from and what we can expect to find as we explore.

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.

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.

Science is global. Einstein’s equation, E=mc2, has to reach everywhere. Science is a beautiful gift to humanity, we should not distort it. Science does not differentiate between multiple races.

Man is not a machine that can be remodelled for quite other purposes as occasion demands, in the hope that it will go on functioning as regularly as before but in a quite different way. He carries his whole history with him; in his very structure is written the history of mankind.

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.

There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart.

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.

The well bred contradict other people. The wise contradict themselves.