Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.

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

The smaller the planets are, they are, other things being equal, of so much the greater density; for so the powers of gravity on their several surfaces come nearer to equality. They are likewise, other things being equal, of the greater density, as they are nearer to the sun.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.

Is man one of God’s blunders? Or is God one of man’s blunders?

We live in ugly times.

Knowledge is true opinion.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

Life and death are one thread, the same line viewed from different sides.

Surely our job while we’re here on Earth is to learn about the world, not to create parallel universes.

To observations which ourselves we make, we grow more partial for th‘ observer’s sake.

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.

Physical comforts cannot subdue mental suffering, and if we look closely, we can see that those who have many possessions are not necessarily happy. In fact, being wealthy often brings even more anxiety.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

You can be a rank insider as well as a rank outsider.

Sin is geographical.

If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people’s opinions will rush in from all quarters.

Both the man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by it.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

My own view is that every company requires a long-term view.

While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn’t the end of everything. I was still looking beyond to other interesting challenges.

I never see what has been done; I only see what remains to be done.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

It is easier to feel than to realize, or in any way explain, Yosemite grandeur. The magnitudes of the rocks and trees and streams are so delicately harmonized, they are mostly hidden.

The fellow that can only see a week ahead is always the popular fellow, for he is looking with the crowd. But the one that can see years ahead, he has a telescope but he can’t make anybody believe that he has it.

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.

I used to tell my husband that, if he could make me ‚understand‘ something, it would be clear to all the other people in the country.

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

We are doomed to cling to a life even while we find it unendurable.

My brother and I were both good at science, and we were both good at English literature. Either one of us could have gone either way.

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

The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.

Everything is political. I will never be a politician or even think political. Me just deal with life and nature. That is the greatest thing to me.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

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.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

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

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.

The brain is wider than the sky.

My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.

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

I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.

It is not necessary that whilst I live I live happily; but it is necessary that so long as I live I should live honourably.

This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.

To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances, invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.

There is love enough in this world for everybody, if people will just look.

Elegance is achieved when all that is superfluous has been discarded and the human being discovers simplicity and concentration: the simpler and more sober the posture, the more beautiful it will be.

No obligation to do the impossible is binding.

Life is our dictionary.

It is not he who reviles or strikes you who insults you, but your opinion that these things are insulting.

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.

All truth is simple… is that not doubly a lie?