The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

Nothing that was worthy in the past departs; no truth or goodness realized by man ever dies, or can die.

Modern science says: ‚The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.‘ From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

We are sinful not only because we have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge, but also because we have not yet eaten of the Tree of Life. The state in which we are is sinful, irrespective of guilt.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

No policy that does not rest upon some philosophical public opinion can be permanently maintained.

The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

All things truly wicked start from innocence.

Biographies, as generally written, are not only misleading but false… In most instances, they commemorate a lie and cheat posterity out of the truth.

There’s this lingering philosophy that movie stars shouldn’t do TV.

I am no longer sure of anything. If I satiate my desires, I sin but I deliver myself from them; if I refuse to satisfy them, they infect the whole soul.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of 60 minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is.

Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.

Frankly, I think that the news industry is critically important because it points out things and surfaces truths that can often be uncomfortable. I think that that’s working, and the spotlight has been pointed on things that we have a responsibility to do better, and I accept that.

There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way, and not starting.

O wretched man, wretched not just because of what you are, but also because you do not know how wretched you are!

At any street corner the feeling of absurdity can strike any man in the face.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

The way up and the way down are one and the same.

Let us work without theorizing, tis the only way to make life endurable.

We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre: rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork, you must make a decision.

Theology is unnecessary.

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

Those thoughts are truth which guide us to beneficial interaction with sensible particulars as they occur, whether they copy these in advance or not.

God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them.

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.

You’re born. You suffer. You die. Fortunately, there’s a loophole.

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.

The world embarrasses me, and I cannot dream that this watch exists and has no watchmaker.

Tis but a part we see, and not a whole.

A good novel tells us the truth about its hero; but a bad novel tells us the truth about its author.

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

Men are disturbed not by things, but by the view which they take of them.

Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

A man is a god in ruins. When men are innocent, life shall be longer, and shall pass into the immortal, as gently as we awake from dreams.

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

Not only is there but one way of doing things rightly, but there is only one way of seeing them, and that is, seeing the whole of them.

Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

All men are equal before fish.

A lie cannot live.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

Of all the varieties of virtues, liberalism is the most beloved.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

I wash my hands of those who imagine chattering to be knowledge, silence to be ignorance, and affection to be art.

Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.

Science is nothing but perception.

There is no such thing as Something for nothing.

It was a favorite expression of Theophrastus that time was the most valuable thing that a man could spend.

Use, do not abuse… neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy.

All human evil comes from a single cause, man’s inability to sit still in a room.

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

If we do discover a complete theory, it should be in time understandable in broad principle by everyone. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people be able to take part in the discussion of why we and the universe exist.