Science is nothing but perception.

Understand: any phenomenon in the world is by nature complex. The people you deal with are equally complex. Any action sets off a limitless chain of reactions. It is never so simple as A leads to B. B will lead to C, D and beyond.

Now I am older, I understand we have to accept who we are.

History should be written as philosophy.

As scientists, we step on the shoulders of science, building on the work that has come before us – aiming to inspire a new generation of young scientists to continue once we are gone.

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

The proper study of mankind is books.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

If one way be better than another, that you may be sure is nature’s way.

To know the laws is not to memorize their letter but to grasp their full force and meaning.

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

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

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

When I left Dortmund, I said it’s not important what people think when you come in but what they think when you leave.

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

No one can be happy who has been thrust outside the pale of truth. And there are two ways that one can be removed from this realm: by lying, or by being lied to.

For NASA, space is still a high priority.

Those who have a true understanding of America know that we have no desire for territorial expansion, for economic or other domination of other peoples. Such purposes are repugnant to our ideals of human freedom.

I’ve always been interested in science – one of my favourite books is James Watson’s ‚Molecular Biology of the Gene.‘

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

It’s not an experiment if you know it’s going to work.

A useless life is an early death.

Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.

My theory is 98 percent of all human endeavor is killing time.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

An overflow of good converts to bad.

The artist forges himself to the others, midway between the beauty he cannot do without and the community he cannot tear himself away from. That is why true artists scorn nothing: they are obliged to understand rather than to judge.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.

It is really funny when people say you’d be obvious for a great villain.

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

You just have to have a simple faith.

Happiness is not an ideal of reason, but of imagination.

An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.

You will never understand bureaucracies until you understand that for bureaucrats procedure is everything and outcomes are nothing.

No one can outrun death. It will catch up to all of us eventually.

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.

Eternal nothingness is fine if you happen to be dressed for it.

To the women and children, T stands for tender. To the bad guys and thugs, it stands for tough.

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

Justice… is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed.

Thought is the wind and knowledge the sail.

The highest proof of the spirit is love. Love the eternal thing which can already on earth possess as it really is.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.

‚Happiness‘ is a pointless goal.

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.

I get to hear the really good or the really bad things in the press, but I don’t read it. I can afford to say that because public opinion does not drive U2’s audience.

The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; the name that can be named is not the eternal name. The Nameless is the origin of Heaven and Earth; the Named is the mother of all things.

In memory everything seems to happen to music.

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

We tend to mistake music for the physical object.

I have an existential map. It has ‚You are here‘ written all over it.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.

The learning and knowledge that we have, is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.

I believe that every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine running around doing exercises.

Study men, not historians.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.