Thought once awakened does not again slumber; unfolds itself into a System of Thought; grows, in man after man, generation after generation, – till its full stature is reached, and such System of Thought can grow no farther, but must give place to another.

The chief contribution of Protestantism to human thought is its massive proof that God is a bore.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

What difference is there between us, save a restless dream that follows my soul but fears to come near you?

If I make music and people hate it, you know, whatever. I’ll die someday, and one day, they will too.

Since you get more joy out of giving joy to others, you should put a good deal of thought into the happiness that you are able to give.

If there are people you haven’t forgiven, you’re not going to really awaken. You have to let go.

The brain is wider than the sky.

The call of death is a call of love. Death can be sweet if we answer it in the affirmative, if we accept it as one of the great eternal forms of life and transformation.

Paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts.

From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

I don’t see myself as a philosopher. That’s awfully boring.

Man is made to adore and to obey: but if you will not command him, if you give him nothing to worship, he will fashion his own divinities, and find a chieftain in his own passions.

Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome.

Each generation goes further than the generation preceding it because it stands on the shoulders of that generation. You will have opportunities beyond anything we’ve ever known.

No art can be noble which is incapable of expressing thought, and no art is capable of expressing thought which does not change.

The difficulty is to try and teach the multitude that something can be true and untrue at the same time.

When I was very young I was sort of floored by the fact that my mother and my father and everyone I knew was going to die one day, and myself too. I had a sort of a philosophical crisis. I couldn’t believe that we were mortal.

Philosophy is the highest music.

A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images.

Theology is unnecessary.

The presidency has made every man who occupied it, no matter how small, bigger than he was; and no matter how big, not big enough for its demands.

You forget that the fruits belong to all and that the land belongs to no one.

Say not, ‚I have found the truth,‘ but rather, ‚I have found a truth.‘

Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.

Nothing cannot exist forever.

I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.

Many foxes grow gray but few grow good.

Beyond a doubt truth bears the same relation to falsehood as light to darkness.

Faith keeps many doubts in her pay. If I could not doubt, I should not believe.

The truth is found when men are free to pursue it.

The biggest risk is not taking any risk… In a world that is changing really quickly, the only strategy that is guaranteed to fail is not taking risks.

It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.

Buddhism is not a creed, it is a doubt.

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

‚Pure experience‘ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.

God does not play dice.

In everything one thing is impossible: rationality.

I can do no other than be reverent before everything that is called life. I can do no other than to have compassion for all that is called life. That is the beginning and the foundation of all ethics.

Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.

The slogan of progress is changing from the full dinner pail to the full garage.

Religion and science are the two conjugated faces or phases of one and the same complete act of knowledge – the only one which can embrace the past and future of evolution and so contemplate, measure and fulfil them.

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

Evolution was far more thrilling to me than the biblical account. Who would not rather be a rising ape than a falling angel? To my juvenile eyes, Darwin was proved true every day. It doesn’t take much to make us flip back into monkeys again.

Innovation is a good thing. The human condition – put aside bioterrorism and a few footnotes – is improving because of innovation.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition.

Whatsoever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd.

Creationists make it sound as though a ‚theory‘ is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.

Must not all things at the last be swallowed up in death?

Life is warfare.

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

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Nothing succeeds like success. Get a little success, and then just get a little more.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

It is as natural to die as to be born; and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.

Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else.