Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

The word ‚belief‘ is a difficult thing for me. I don’t believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it – I don’t need to believe it.

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

Religion is the frozen thought of man out of which they build temples.

The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

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.

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.

It is the greatest of all advantages to enjoy no advantage at all.

There is not enough love and goodness in the world to permit giving any of it away to imaginary beings.

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

Poetry is finer and more philosophical than history; for poetry expresses the universal, and history only the particular.

Belief consists in accepting the affirmations of the soul; unbelief, in denying them.

To believe in God is impossible not to believe in Him is absurd.

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

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

Man has throughout the ages been seeking something beyond himself, beyond material welfare – something we call truth or God or reality, a timeless state – something that cannot be disturbed by circumstances, by thought or by human corruption.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

Reality is a sliding door.

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?

The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.

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

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

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

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.

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?

Dying is one of the few things that can be done as easily lying down.

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

Love has reasons which reason cannot understand.

The brain is wider than the sky.

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

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?‘

He who has made a fair compact with poverty is rich.

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.

Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?

The earth belongs to the living, not to the dead.

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

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

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

In war, when a commander becomes so bereft of reason and perspective that he fails to understand the dependence of arms on Divine guidance, he no longer deserves victory.

There is no wealth but life.

Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

And, after all, what is a lie? ‚Tis but the truth in a masquerade.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

The world is indebted for all triumphs which have been gained by reason and humanity over error and oppression.

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.

A man should be upright, not be kept upright.

Plato is my friend; Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.

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

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

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.