The universe is not indifferent to our existence – it depends on it.

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

Science is not everything, but science is very beautiful.

It is impossible to imagine the universe run by a wise, just and omnipotent God, but it is quite easy to imagine it run by a board of gods.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

I don’t pretend to understand the Universe – it’s a great deal bigger than I am.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

Philosophy is the highest music.

I believe everyone should have a broad picture of how the universe operates and our place in it. It is a basic human desire. And it also puts our worries in perspective.

The missing link in cosmology is the nature of dark matter and dark energy.

The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things.

If you think in terms of a year, plant a seed; if in terms of ten years, plant trees; if in terms of 100 years, teach the people.

Ethics is nothing else than reverence for life.

Surely our job while we’re here on Earth is to learn about the world, not to create parallel universes.

You just have to have a simple faith.

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

Time stays, we go.

Protecting the rights of even the least individual among us is basically the only excuse the government has for even existing.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

I imagine that yes is the only living thing.

That government is best which governs least.

Hope in reality is the worst of all evils because it prolongs the torments of man.

But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

Don’t think you are going to conceal thoughts by concealing evidence that they ever existed.

To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short.

When a hundred men stand together, each of them loses his mind and gets another one.

There never was and is not likely soon to be a nation of philosophers, nor am I certain it is desirable that there should be.

I have gained this from philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law.

The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are dead.

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We, of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation.

There cannot be a God because if there were one, I could not believe that I was not He.

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

What is the Tao Te Ching? Five hundred years before the birth of Jesus, a God-realized being named Lao-tzu in ancient China dictated 81 verses which are regarded by many as the ultimate commentary on the nature of existence.

God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars.

What we live by we die by.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

It is the eye of other people that ruin us. If I were blind I would want, neither fine clothes, fine houses or fine furniture.

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.

There is no such thing as accident; it is fate misnamed.

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

Judgments, value judgments concerning life, for or against, can in the last resort never be true: they possess value only as symptoms, they come into consideration only as symptoms – in themselves such judgments are stupidities.

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.

The false is nothing but an imitation of the true.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

The whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art… It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

If boyhood and youth are but vanity, must it not be our ambition to become men?

Things in themselves have no life in them. A car can’t comfort or encourage you. A house means nothing if there’s no life and love inside.

Such is the feebleness of humanity, such is its perversity, that doubtless it is better for it to be subject to all possible superstitions, as long as they are not murderous, than to live without religion.

My guiding principle is this: Guilt is never to be doubted.

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

The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment, it is all that links them together.

For me, the real earth is that chosen part of the universe, still almost universally dispersed and in course of gradual segregation, but which is little by little taking on body and form in Christ.

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?

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