The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.

I have to be seen to be believed.

The question of whether or not there is a God or truth or reality or whatever you like to call it, can never be answered by books, by priests, philosopher’s or saviours. Nobody and nothing can answer the question but you yourself, and that is why you must know yourself – Immaturity lies only in total ignorance of self.

What can everyone do? Praise and blame. This is human virtue, this is human madness.

Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price.

Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.

Better understated than overstated. Let people be surprised that it was more than you promised and easier than you said.

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

You might say, ‚Can’t we have a more human Christianity, without the cross, without Jesus, without stripping ourselves?‘ In this way we’d become pastry-shop Christians, like a pretty cake and nice sweet things. Pretty, but not true Christians.

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings.

Humor must not professedly teach and it must not professedly preach, but it must do both if it would live forever.

Though we may know Him by a thousand names, He is one and the same to us all.

Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.

If you pursue good with labor, the labor passes away but the good remains; if you pursue evil with pleasure, the pleasure passes away and the evil remains.

I don’t believe in collective guilt, but I do believe in collective responsibility.

Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.

The empty vessel makes the loudest sound.

States are not moral agents.

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

Small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

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

Science is but an image of the truth.

Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children.

I argue thee that love is life. And life hath immortality.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

Nobody believes in completely unadulterated capitalism.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

No one can outrun death. It will catch up to all of us eventually.

The existentialist says at once that man is anguish.

Whatever the universal nature assigns to any man at any time is for the good of that man at that time.

Faith is easy; I think people complicate it.

Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

You hear a lot about God these days: God, the beneficent; God, the all-great; God, the Almighty; God, the most powerful; God, the giver of life; God, the creator of death. I mean, we’re hearing about God all the time, so we better learn how to deal with it. But if we know anything about God, God is arbitrary.

Well, we can’t say any more than we can say there is no god, there is no afterlife. We can only say there is no persuasive evidence for or argument for it.

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.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

Real art is basic emotion. If a scene is handled with simplicity – and I don’t mean simple – it’ll be good, and the public will know it.

It is in life as it is in ways, the shortest way is commonly the foulest, and surely the fairer way is not much about.

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I’m innocent. You’ve got to believe I’m innocent. If you don’t, take my job.

We like security: we like the pope to be infallible in matters of faith, and grave doctors to be so in moral questions so that we can feel reassured.

Thought is the wind and knowledge the sail.

There is no chance and anarchy in the universe. All is system and gradation. Every god is there sitting in his sphere.

To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced.

By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.

If I think more about death than some other people, it is probably because I love life more than they do.

Faith means belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible.

Let us beware of saying that death is the opposite of life. The living being is only a species of the dead, and a very rare species.

Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed… Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.

I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.