No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

Silence is the mother of truth.

Who would set a limit to the mind of man? Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

Why does the eye see a thing more clearly in dreams than the imagination when awake?

Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

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

Nature abhors annihilation.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

We do not know what is really good or bad fortune.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being.

Everything deep is also simple and can be reproduced simply as long as its reference to the whole truth is maintained. But what matters is not what is witty but what is true.

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

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

Disease generally begins that equality which death completes.

Information is not knowledge.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

I am prepared to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.

No man was ever wise by chance.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

To be is to do.

Illusion is the first of all pleasures.

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

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.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

Life is wasted on the living.

I think that a man should not live beyond the age when he begins to deteriorate, when the flame that lighted the brightest moment of his life has weakened.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

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

Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different.

Those who want the Government to regulate matters of the mind and spirit are like men who are so afraid of being murdered that they commit suicide to avoid assassination.

To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don’t be.

Humanity is still advancing; and it will probably continue to advance for hundreds of thousands of years more, always on condition that we know how to keep the same line of advance as our ancestors towards ever greater consciousness and complexity.

The universe is change; our life is what our thoughts make it.

If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist.

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.

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.

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

If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.

Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

When it’s your time, it is your time.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid.

Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Why are our days numbered and not, say, lettered?

I’ve already become a mastodon in print – I don’t see a consciousness for my kind of journalism.

Those whom the gods love grow young.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

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.