No notice is taken of a little evil, but when it increases it strikes the eye.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

I think it’s horrible that people have to be told. Don’t smoke! Everybody knows it’s bad for the health. But they have to forbid it.

The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

If you live only in one culture for the first 20 years of your life, you become conditioned without knowing it.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

Everything can change at any moment, suddenly and forever.

The wild Indian power of escaping observation, even where there is little or no cover to hide in, was probably slowly acquired in hard hunting and fighting lessons while trying to approach game, take enemies by surprise, or get safely away when compelled to retreat.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

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

The lie is a condition of life.

Morality is the herd-instinct in the individual.

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast.

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

I never saw a discontented tree. They grip the ground as though they liked it, and though fast rooted they travel about as far as we do.

Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

It is necessary to look at the results of observation objectively, because you, the experimenter, might like one result better than another.

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is.

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

I think feminists are unaware of the tremendous extent of the role of women in history.

Ignorance of all things is an evil neither terrible nor excessive, nor yet the greatest of all; but great cleverness and much learning, if they be accompanied by a bad training, are a much greater misfortune.

Knowledge is true opinion.

I became a people-watcher when I lost all my friends when I was 12.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.

The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It’s a battle you can’t hope to win – it’s a battle that’s going to go on forever. It’s part of the human condition.

The only objects of practical reason are therefore those of good and evil. For by the former is meant an object necessarily desired according to a principle of reason; by the latter one necessarily shunned, also according to a principle of reason.

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.

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

All this worldly wisdom was once the unamiable heresy of some wise man.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

Understanding does not cure evil, but it is a definite help, inasmuch as one can cope with a comprehensible darkness.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it’s a drag? But you see, that’s what people do.

But if you – if what – the reports are true, what they’re saying is, is that as a consequence of us getting 30 million additional people health care, at the margins that’s going to increase our costs, we knew that.

The wisest hustler can suddenly fall for the worst tramp and lose all of his money on her. The hustler is aware of his own weaknesses and openings to con. This awareness is his edge.

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.

Where a man can live, he can also live well.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

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.

A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?

People were asleep, but I think they’re waking up now. Trump has given everybody a good kick, and people are waking up and realizing they’ve got to get involved.

As we are, so we associate. The good, by affinity, seek the good; the vile, by affinity, the vile. Thus of their own volition, souls proceed into Heaven, into Hell.

Use, do not abuse… neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

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

Risk is a part of God’s game, alike for men and nations.

The greatness of man is great in that he knows himself to be wretched. A tree does not know itself to be wretched.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

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.

Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.