Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.

Nobody knows me.

What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

There is no doubt that life is given us, not to be enjoyed, but to be overcome; to be got over.

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

I talk to myself all the time. Just make sure you answer.

Theology is the effort to explain the unknowable in terms of the not worth knowing.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal.

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

A beautiful body perishes, but a work of art dies not.

Just as courage imperils life, fear protects it.

The fear of death often proves mortal, and sets people on methods to save their Lives, which infallibly destroy them.

Reason is the enemy of faith.

Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.

The utmost extent of man’s knowledge, is to know that he knows nothing.

That government is best which governs least.

Between falsehood and useless truth there is little difference. As gold which he cannot spend will make no man rich, so knowledge which cannot apply will make no man wise.

Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

Every man supposes himself not to be fully understood or appreciated.

To be an atheist requires an indefinitely greater measure of faith than to recieve all the great truths which atheism would deny.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

A man who does not think for himself does not think at all.

For in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s futures. And we are all mortal.

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.

The proper function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.

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

I don’t believe in death, neither in flesh nor in spirit.

Man – a being in search of meaning.

If the people are happy, united, wealthy, and powerful, we presume the rest. We conclude that to be good from whence good is derived.

The major networks, the cable networks, they’re being prosecutors. They’re judges and jurors and executioners. Well, c’mon, that’s ridiculous. But they’re doing it.

No matter what your mission is, have some notion in your head. Forget the model, whether it’s government or nonprofit or profit. Ask yourself the more important question: Is my mission improving the world? Are you sure about it? Seek to disconfirm that all the time. And if you can, change your mission.

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

The reason I talk to myself is that I’m the only one whose answers I accept.

To do all that one is able to do, is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do, is to be a god.

It’s the philosophies of being an athlete that carry me today.

While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.

For a young person, it is almost a sin, or at least a danger, to be too preoccupied with himself; but for the ageing person, it is a duty and a necessity to devote serious attention to himself.

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

Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself.

A man is but the product of his thoughts, what he thinks he becomes.

I get naturally uncomfortable when I’m put under a magnifying glass.

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men’s cottage princes‘ palaces.

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

Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.

I have discovered that all human evil comes from this, man’s being unable to sit still in a room.

I hate all politics. I don’t like either political party. One should not belong to them – one should be an individual, standing in the middle. Anyone that belongs to a party stops thinking.

To accuse others for one’s own misfortunes is a sign of want of education. To accuse oneself shows that one’s education has begun. To accuse neither oneself nor others shows that one’s education is complete.

Lots of songs aren’t even from my experiences, but they’re about accepting… the dark things about yourself.

This is the truth: as from a fire aflame thousands of sparks come forth, even so from the Creator an infinity of beings have life and to him return again.

So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.