Nature does nothing in vain.

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

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

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?‘

All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.

So comes snow after fire, and even dragons have their ending!

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

I’m an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call ‚the last illusion.‘ The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what’s going on but that the planets know what’s going on.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry.

Just as a candle cannot burn without fire, men cannot live without a spiritual life.

When you go to the mountains, you see them and you admire them. In a sense, they give you a challenge, and you try to express that challenge by climbing them.

All things in the world come from being. And being comes from non-being.

Our character is not so much the product of race and heredity as of those circumstances by which nature forms our habits, by which we are nurtured and live.

Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

Plato was a bore.

Did you know there’s a difference between being busy and being fruitful? Did you ever stop to think that just being busy – running around in circles all day but not accomplishing anything – is the same as wasting your time? It’s frustrating to expend so much energy and time and not have any fruit from your effort!

He too serves a certain purpose who only stands and cheers.

We never live; we are always in the expectation of living.

Time is bunk.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

Disease is the retribution of outraged Nature.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

It is the nature of all greatness not to be exact.

Flowers… are a proud assertion that a ray of beauty outvalues all the utilities of the world.

It is a curious thing: man, the centre and creator of all science, is the only object which our science has not yet succeeded in including in a homogeneous representation of the universe. We know the history of his bones, but no ordered place has yet been found in nature for his reflective intelligence.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

I think life on Earth must be about more than just solving problems… It’s got to be something inspiring, even if it is vicarious.

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

If you look deep enough you will see music; the heart of nature being everywhere music.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.

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

I don’t think it’s possible to have a sense of tragedy without having a sense of humor.

If you can feel that Mother Earth is in you, and you are Mother Earth, then you are not any longer afraid to die because the earth is not dying. Like a wave appears and disappears and appears again.

Certainly the best works, and of greatest merit for the public, have proceeded from the unmarried, or childless men.

Things in themselves have no life in them. A car can’t comfort or encourage you. A house means nothing if there’s no life and love inside.

The day which we fear as our last is but the birthday of eternity.

There is nothing good or evil save in the will.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased.

There is more to life than increasing its speed.

When nature has work to be done, she creates a genius to do it.

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

If future generations are to remember us more with gratitude than sorrow, we must achieve more than just the miracles of technology. We must also leave them a glimpse of the world as it was created, not just as it looked when we got through with it.

There is but one law for all, namely that law which governs all law, the law of our Creator, the law of humanity, justice, equity – the law of nature and of nations.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

Knowing that you are going to die is, I suspect, the beginning of wisdom.

I believe in believing. My coach John Kavanagh is a big atheist, and he is always trying to persuade people to his way of thinking, and I think, ‚What a waste of energy.‘ If people want to believe in this god or that god, that’s fine by me; believe away. But I think we can be our own gods. I believe in myself.

I think a simple rule of business is, if you do the things that are easier first, then you can actually make a lot of progress.

What is a fear of living? It’s being preeminently afraid of dying. It is not doing what you came here to do, out of timidity and spinelessness. The antidote is to take full responsibility for yourself – for the time you take up and the space you occupy. If you don’t know what you’re here to do, then just do some good.

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far!

I am a deeply religious nonbeliever – this is a somewhat new kind of religion.

Yesterday’s weirdness is tomorrow’s reason why.

Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.

Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people.

Outsourcing is inevitable, and I don’t think it’s necessarily treating people like things.