Plato was a bore.

Nothing gives rest but the sincere search for truth.

It is impossible to reason without arriving at a Supreme Being.

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.

In the sphere of thought, absurdity and perversity remain the masters of the world, and their dominion is suspended only for brief periods.

To go to the world below, having a soul which is like a vessel full of injustice, is the last and worst of all the evils.

Every person takes the limits of their own field of vision for the limits of the world.

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.

A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known.

If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how incapable must Man be of learning from experience.

I sometimes think that God in creating man somewhat overestimated his ability.

Whenever a high-profile leader dies, people immediately attempt to summarize that person’s life in a sentence. Often, critics and commentators get caught up looking at the leader’s style, or which political or philosophical camp they represented.

The Hindu religions gave me the impression of a vast well into which one plunges in order to grasp the reflection of the sun.

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

Glance into the world just as though time were gone: and everything crooked will become straight to you.

This is an important book, the critic assumes, because it deals with war. This is an insignificant book because it deals with the feelings of women in a drawing-room.

I want to know why the universe exists, why there is something greater than nothing.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

Maybe this world is another planet’s hell.

He who praises everybody, praises nobody.

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will’s freedom after it.

He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one’s gaze.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true – it is all true.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

We call a man a bigot or a slave of dogma because he is a thinker who has thought thoroughly and to a definite end.

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

It is not living that matters, but living rightly.

Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

But blind to former as to future fate, what mortal knows his pre-existent state?

Hell is other people.

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move.

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.

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

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

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

Nothing in the universe is contingent, but all things are conditioned to exist and operate in a particular manner by the necessity of the divine nature.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.

Leave it as it is. The ages have been at work on it and man can only mar it.

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

The object of the superior man is truth.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

For my own part, I would rather excel in knowledge of the highest secrets of philosophy than in arms.

It is folly for a man to pray to the gods for that which he has the power to obtain by himself.

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

To do nothing is also a good remedy.

The perception of beauty is a moral test.

It is by no means an irrational fancy that, in a future existence, we shall look upon what we think our present existence, as a dream.

Before the effect one believes in different causes than one does after the effect.

It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.

There is no body of theory or significant body of relevant information, beyond the comprehension of the layman, which makes policy immune from criticism.

Modern education has devoted itself to the teaching of impudence, and then we complain that we can no longer control our mobs.

The revelation of thought takes men out of servitude into freedom.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

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

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.

As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind.

If you think only of evil, then you become pessimistic and hopeless like Freud. But if you think there is no evil, then you’re just one more deluded Pollyanna.