The philosophical question before us is, when we make an observation of our track in the past, does the result of our observation become real in the same sense that the final state would be defined if an outside observer were to make the observation?

It is incomprehensible that God should exist, and it is incomprehensible that he should not exist.

I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one’s memories.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.

Confront a corpse at least once. The absolute absence of life is the most disturbing and challenging confrontation you will ever have.

The spirit of an age may be best expressed in the abstract ideal arts, for the spirit itself is abstract and ideal.

If you look at me close enough, there’s a small resemblance to a chicken nugget. I don’t know if it’s my skin texture or my hair, but the resemblance is definitely there.

There is an optical illusion about every person we meet.

No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good.

I love to go to the zoo. But not on Sunday. I don’t like to see the people making fun of the animals, when it should be the other way around.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

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.

Base souls have no faith in great individuals.

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

True Scouts are the best friends of animals, for from living in the woods and wilds, and practising observation and tracking, they get to know more than other people about the ways and habits of birds and animals, and therefore they understand them and are more in sympathy with them.

Most people have no idea what something would sound like if it wasn’t an MP3.

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don’t intend to waste any of mine.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

Time, which alone makes the reputation of men, ends by making their defects respectable.

When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.

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.

To be or not to be is not a question of compromise. Either you be or you don’t be.

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.

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

Each generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.

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

Everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.

There are as many pillows of illusion as flakes in a snow-storm. We wake from one dream into another dream.

The eyes like sentinel occupy the highest place in the body.

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

That the divided but contiguous particles of bodies may be separated from one another is a matter of observation; and, in the particles that remain undivided, our minds are able to distinguish yet lesser parts, as is mathematically demonstrated.

I do not believe that any man fears to be dead, but only the stroke of death.

No man can reveal to you nothing but that which already lies half-asleep in the dawning of your knowledge.

A person who is too nice an observer of the business of the crowd, like one who is too curious in observing the labor of bees, will often be stung for his curiosity.

I have lived long enough to satisfy both nature and glory.

More than anything else, I want the folks back at home to think right of me.

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us.

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

To see clearly is poetry, prophecy and religion all in one.

Life every man holds dear; but the dear man holds honor far more precious dear than life.

Worthless people live only to eat and drink; people of worth eat and drink only to live.

I’m not really concerned with portraying this tough warrior – I mean, that’s part of my job and I take that very seriously. But I don’t have anything to hide, and I’m not concerned with what people think.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.

The first step in the evolution of ethics is a sense of solidarity with other human beings.

Justice is a temporary thing that must at last come to an end; but the conscience is eternal and will never die.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

Men show their character in nothing more clearly than what they think laughable.

In France there are, I think, less than one per cent of people who are too skinny.

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

He who knows, does not speak. He who speaks, does not know.

There’s nothing you can know that isn’t known.

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!

The misfortune of the wise is better than the prosperity of the fool.

Social media has given us this idea that we should all have a posse of friends when in reality, if we have one or two really good friends, we are lucky.

Death is a commingling of eternity with time; in the death of a good man, eternity is seen looking through time.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

If you have enough people sitting around telling you you’re wonderful, then you start believing you’re fabulous, then someone tells you you stink and you believe that too!

Love is the delusion that one woman differs from another.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.