Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.

Everything is the product of one universal creative effort. There is nothing dead in Nature. Everything is organic and living, and therefore the whole world appears to be a living organism.

The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree.

A person who is gifted sees the essential point and leaves the rest as surplus.

If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?

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

Courage is a mean with regard to fear and confidence.

I can see, and that is why I can be happy, in what you call the dark, but which to me is golden. I can see a God-made world, not a manmade world.

There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers.

Regarding life, the wisest men of all ages have judged alike: it is worthless.

No other planet in the solar system is a suitable home for human beings; it’s this world or nothing. That’s a very powerful perception.

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.

A new philosophy generally means in practice the praise of some old vice.

If you understand the universe, you control it, in a way.

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

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.

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

If it’s true that our species is alone in the universe, then I’d have to say the universe aimed rather low and settled for very little.

Evil is the product of the ability of humans to make abstract that which is concrete.

Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.

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.

Some folks look at me and see a certain swagger, which in Texas is called ‚walking.‘

I don’t think the Christian Right dominates America in the way some in the media believe they do.

The true history of my administration will be written 50 years from now, and you and I will not be around to see it.

Time and the hour run through the roughest day.

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

Judgements prevent us from seeing the good that lies beyond appearances.

When you’re young, you look at television and think, there’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.

A man’s as miserable as he thinks he is.

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

There is a rollicking kindness that looks like malice.

There’s no one thing that is true. They’re all true.

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.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

The usual approach of science of constructing a mathematical model cannot answer the questions of why there should be a universe for the model to describe. Why does the universe go to all the bother of existing?

I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.

Truth is a good dog; but always beware of barking too close to the heels of an error, lest you get your brains kicked out.

When I was 18, I thought that, to be a romantic, you couldn’t live past 30.

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

Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

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?

Nothing cannot exist forever.

The first lesson a revolutionary must learn is that he is a doomed man.

That’s the shock: All cliches are true. The years really do speed by. Life really is as short as they tell you it is. And there really is a God – so do I buy that one? If all the other cliches are true… Hell, don’t pose me that one.

Chaos was the law of nature; Order was the dream of man.

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.

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

Science has not yet taught us if madness is or is not the sublimity of the intelligence.

All fiction is about people, unless it’s about rabbits pretending to be people. It’s all essentially characters in action, which means characters moving through time and changes taking place, and that’s what we call ‚the plot‘.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

‚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.

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

If we had a keen vision of all that is ordinary in human life, it would be like hearing the grass grow or the squirrel’s heart beat, and we should die of that roar which is the other side of silence.

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

We are never further from what we wish than when we believe that we have what we wished for.