She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

Nature does nothing in vain.

The natural cause of the human mind is certainly from credulity to skepticism.

Wisdom has its root in goodness, not goodness its root in wisdom.

Today we say that the law of relativity is supposed to be true at all energies, but someday somebody may come along and say how stupid we were.

I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature.

I know that the arts are important. I’m not denying that, but I can’t associate myself with all the claptrap that goes on around it.

Man wants to live, but it is useless to hope that this desire will dictate all his actions.

Grounded in the natural philosophy of the Middle Ages, alchemy formed a bridge: on the one hand into the past, to Gnosticism, and on the other into the future, to the modern psychology of the unconscious.

My faith was tested like Job. That’s the message I try to tell other people: just because you believe in God, serve God, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, people gotta realize, it don’t mean things not gonna happen to you.

We are twice armed if we fight with faith.

Life is hard. After all, it kills you.

To be is to do.

Nothing exists from whose nature some effect does not follow.

If any of you should ask me for an epitome of the Christian religion, I should say that it is in one word – prayer. Live and die without prayer, and you will pray long enough when you get to hell.

A man’s character is his guardian divinity.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.

I believe in a passion for inclusion.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

Would you believe in what you believe in if you were the only one who believed it?

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

Gold was a gift to Jesus. If it’s good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me!

For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world.

I believe in God, but not as one thing, not as an old man in the sky. I believe that what people call God is something in all of us. I believe that what Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and all the rest said was right. It’s just that the translations have gone wrong.

The supernatural is the natural not yet understood.

The fear of death follows from the fear of life. A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

All those who believe in psychokinesis – raise my hand.

Property is intended to serve life, and no matter how much we surround it with rights and respect, it has no personal being. It is part of the earth man walks on. It is not man.

I’m an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call ‚the last illusion.‘ The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what’s going on but that the planets know what’s going on.

I don’t believe in nepotism. I don’t much like the idea of parents who interfere.

What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it’s curved like a road through mountains.

I don’t join the New Atheists. So, for example, I wouldn’t have the arrogance to lecture some mother who hopes to see her dying child in Heaven – that’s none of my business, ultimately. I won’t lecture her on the philosophy of science.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

What was God doing before the divine creation?

Who, being loved, is poor?

Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

It is always better to have no ideas than false ones; to believe nothing, than to believe what is wrong.

God not only plays dice, but also sometimes throws them where they cannot be seen.

It is natural for the mind to believe and for the will to love; so that, for want of true objects, they must attach themselves to false.

I believe in universal health care. And I am not afraid to say so.

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.

Many a doctrine is like a window pane. We see truth through it but it divides us from truth.

Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear.

They tell us that suicide is the greatest piece of cowardice… that suicide is wrong; when it is quite obvious that there is nothing in the world to which every man has a more unassailable title than to his own life and person.

He who doesn’t pray to the Lord prays to the devil.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

As a well-spent day brings happy sleep, so a life well spent brings happy death.

Life is neither good or evil, but only a place for good and evil.

God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect he has given us, on this side of the grave.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

One may understand the cosmos, but never the ego; the self is more distant than any star.

The most positive men are the most credulous.

I don’t believe in the school of hard knocks, although I’ve had them. All that stuff about whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger is so not true. Do you know what makes you stronger? When people treat you and your art with dignity.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

To the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe only the truth.

The people respect and believe in men who fulfill their duty.

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.