Science is nothing but perception.

Everything that happens once can never happen again. But everything that happens twice will surely happen a third time.

Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

Whether if soul did not exist time would exist or not, is a question that may fairly be asked; for if there cannot be someone to count there cannot be anything that can be counted, so that evidently there cannot be number; for number is either what has been, or what can be, counted.

The object of the superior man is truth.

Man is made by his belief. As he believes, so he is.

People look at the same passage, and one person will say this is the best thing he’s ever read, and another person will say it’s absolutely idiotic. I mean, there’s no way to reconcile those two things. You just have to forget the whole business of what people are saying.

Words are more powerful than some noises. Noises won’t last long. Lyrics are so important, and people don’t realise that.

Although nature commences with reason and ends in experience it is necessary for us to do the opposite, that is to commence with experience and from this to proceed to investigate the reason.

The ideas associated with the problems of the development of science, as far as I can see by looking around me, are not of the kind that everyone appreciates.

The world is never quiet, even its silence eternally resounds with the same notes, in vibrations which escape our ears. As for those that we perceive, they carry sounds to us, occasionally a chord, never a melody.

The desire of excessive power caused the angels to fall; the desire of knowledge caused men to fall.

We’re not trying to make you less of a man. We just want you to love us as deeply and as wholesomely and as fully as we love you.

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered. An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

I like the way the stories of my relationships sound to music more than the way they look in print, in gossip columns or in me talking about them in interviews. I think it’s a better way of telling the stories.

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.

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

The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.

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.

All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.

If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.

A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‚Tell me: when God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?‘ We must always consider the person.

It is often said that before you die your life passes before your eyes. It is in fact true. It’s called living.

You can see neurosis from below – as a sickness – as most psychiatrists see it. Or you can understand it as a compassionate man might: respecting the neurosis as a fumbling and inefficient effort toward good ends.

I’m a strict, strict agnostic. It’s very different from a casual, ‚I don’t know.‘ It’s that you cannot present as knowledge something that is not knowledge. You can present it as faith, you can present it as belief, but you can’t present it as fact.

Freedom without limits is just a word.

The intellectual is different from the ordinary man, but only in certain sections of his personality, and even then not all the time.

Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains.

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

When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it’s like giving them emotional oxygen.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

Words are only painted fire; a look is the fire itself.

The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image, put it that way.

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.

My daughter doesn’t even get my humor. She’s like, ‚Um, no. I don’t get it, Dad. Mmm, no, not that one, Dad.‘

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

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

A well governed appetite is the greater part of liberty.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

The great quest of life has always been to discover truth.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

Women have to be active listeners and interrupters – but when you interrupt, you have to know what you are talking about.

A true artist is expected to be all that is noble-minded, and this is not altogether a mistake; on the other hand, however, in what a mean way are critics allowed to pounce upon us.

There is danger that we lose sight of what our friend is absolutely, while considering what she is to us alone.

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

I have all the emotions that everyone has; it just appears that I don’t.

There is nothing insignificant in the world. It all depends on the point of view.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

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.

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

The good is the beautiful.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

What’s the good of drawing in the next breath if all you do is let it out and draw in another?

Not always actions show the man; we find who does a kindness is not therefore kind.

The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.

Man takes his law from the Earth; the Earth takes its law from Heaven; Heaven takes its law from the Tao. The law of the Tao is its being what it is.

We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s ‚Pensees‘ and read, ‚I am the great silent spaces between worlds.‘

The truth of things is the chief nutriment of superior intellects.

All of us are guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.