The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are… than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

No finite point has meaning without an infinite reference point.

Sin cannot be conceived in a natural state, but only in a civil state, where it is decreed by common consent what is good or bad.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

Nothing can come of nothing.

Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

That was the first time I saw a horse start from a kneeling position!

If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

If we hope for what we are not likely to possess, we act and think in vain, and make life a greater dream and shadow than it really is.

I think I’ve committed the one really bad English crime, which is I’ve risen above my station. I was supposed to be a pop star, and suddenly I’m claiming that I’m an artist of some kind.

If you were to destroy the belief in immortality in mankind, not only love but every living force on which the continuation of all life in the world depended, would dry up at once.

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

If there is something to pardon in everything, there is also something to condemn.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

Nature and books belong to the eyes that see them.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

As men are not able to fight against death, misery, ignorance, they have taken it into their heads, in order to be happy, not to think of them at all.

The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.

Physics is really figuring out how to discover new things that are counterintuitive, like quantum mechanics. It’s really counterintuitive.

For a long time, I thought I was ugly and disfigured. This made me shy and timid, and I often reacted to insults that were not intended.

We are here and it is now. Further than that, all human knowledge is moonshine.

The wild Indian power of escaping observation, even where there is little or no cover to hide in, was probably slowly acquired in hard hunting and fighting lessons while trying to approach game, take enemies by surprise, or get safely away when compelled to retreat.

The supreme function of reason is to show man that some things are beyond reason.

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

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.

I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity.

Science is but an image of the truth.

For centuries, theologians have been explaining the unknowable in terms of the-not-worth-knowing.

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

The marvel of the Bhagavad-Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life’s wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion.

That’s another hallmark of truth, is that it snaps things together. People write to me all the time and say it’s as if things were coming together in my mind. It’s like the Platonic idea that all learning was remembering. You have a nature, and when you feel that nature articulated, it’s it’s like the act of snapping the puzzle pieces together.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

There are only two things. Truth and lies. Truth is indivisible, hence it cannot recognize itself; anyone who wants to recognize it has to be a lie.

Religions get lost as people do.

The foolish man conceives the idea of ‚self.‘ The wise man sees there is no ground on which to build the idea of ‚self;‘ thus, he has a right conception of the world and well concludes that all compounds amassed by sorrow will be dissolved again, but the truth will remain.

One always dies too soon or too late. And yet, life is there, finished: the line is drawn, and it must all be added up. You are nothing other than your life.

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

He who does not think much of himself is much more esteemed than he imagines.

Physics has a history of synthesizing many phenomena into a few theories.

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.

I done wrestled with an alligator, I done tussled with a whale; handcuffed lightning, thrown thunder in jail; only last week, I murdered a rock, injured a stone, hospitalised a brick; I’m so mean I make medicine sick.

Admiration is the daughter of ignorance.

Please think of me like an endangered species and just observe me quietly from far away. If you try to talk to me or touch me casually, I may get intimidated and bite you. So please be careful.

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

Atheism is a non-prophet organization.

God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

Those who lack the courage will always find a philosophy to justify it.

I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head. But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.

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

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

Life is the childhood of our immortality.

They say the universe is expanding. That should help with the traffic.

Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does.

Our care should not be to have lived long as to have lived enough.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

Do not impose on others what you yourself do not desire.