Science is nothing but perception.

Men would be angels, angels would be gods.

New discoveries in science will continue to create a thousand new frontiers for those who still would adventure.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

Ignorant kindness may have the effect of cruelty; but to be angry with it as if it were direct cruelty would be an ignorant unkindness.

We see the world not as it is, but as we are.

Science is properly more scrupulous than dogma. Dogma gives a charter to mistake, but the very breath of science is a contest with mistake, and must keep the conscience alive.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

We do not learn; and what we call learning is only a process of recollection.

It seems that when you have cancer you are a brave battler against the disease, but when you have Alzheimer’s you are an old fart. That’s how people see you. It makes you feel quite alone.

I will govern my life and thoughts as if the whole world were to see the one and read the other, for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God, who is the searcher of our hearts, all our privacies are open?

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

When I began in 1960, individuality wasn’t an accepted thing to look for; it was about species-specific behaviour. But animal behaviour is not hard science. There’s room for intuition.

All knowledge or form conception is evoked through the medium of the eye, either in response to disturbances directly received on the retina or to their fainter secondary effects and reverberations. Other sense organs can only call forth feelings which have no reality of existence and of which no conception can be formed.

Science sent the Hubble telescope out into space, so it could capture light and the absence thereof, from the very beginning of time. And the telescope really did that. So now we know that there was once absolutely nothing, such a perfect nothing that there wasn’t even nothing or once.

Imaginary evils soon become real one by indulging our reflections on them.

They know enough who know how to learn.

People take the little bit of information they’re fed, and they draw a picture of who you are. Most of the time, it’s wrong.

Listen, I think that people want a president who is going to be interested in the things that keep them up at night, the things that are weighing on them, the things that are debilitating and can be addressed.

Trying to read our DNA is like trying to understand software code – with only 90% of the code riddled with errors. It’s very difficult in that case to understand and predict what that software code is going to do.

Creationists make it sound as though a ‚theory‘ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man’s desire to understand.

Is science of any value? I think a power to do something is of value. Whether the result is a good thing or a bad thing depends on how it is used, but the power is a value.

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

I say, beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

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.

If you do things, whether it’s acting or music or painting, do it without fear – that’s my philosophy. Because nobody can arrest you and put you in jail if you paint badly, so there’s nothing to lose.

What really raises one’s indignation against suffering is not suffering intrinsically, but the senselessness of suffering.

Our treasure lies in the beehive of our knowledge. We are perpetually on the way thither, being by nature winged insects and honey gatherers of the mind.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

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

I grew up with the biologists. I know how they think.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

The more you explain it, the more I don’t understand it.

Different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Some men do think I’m a psycho bunny-boiler.

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

If I shall exist eternally, how shall I exist tomorrow?

A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.

Sometimes one pays most for the things one gets for nothing.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.

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

When you have enough understanding and compassion in you, then that amount of understanding and compassion will try to express itself in action. And your practice should help you to cultivate more understanding and compassion.

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

Nobody is as powerful as we make them out to be.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

Truth is a pathless land.

The product of mental labor – science – always stands far below its value, because the labor-time necessary to reproduce it has no relation at all to the labor-time required for its original production.

It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow’s viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work out our differences.

The aim of the wise is not to secure pleasure, but to avoid pain.

You cannot open a book without learning something.

Death is the wish of some, the relief of many, and the end of all.

There is no such thing as an underestimate of average intelligence.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza’s God, it won’t love us in return.

Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of the time he will pick himself up and continue on.

I think perhaps the most important problem is that we are trying to understand the fundamental workings of the universe via a language devised for telling one another when the best fruit is.