Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so.

Hence poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are rather of the nature of universals, whereas those of history are singulars.

Religion is not a department of life; it is something that enters into the whole of it.

The world forgetting, by the world forgot.

O God, O God, how weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world!

You are the universe, you aren’t in the universe.

The least initial deviation from the truth is multiplied later a thousandfold.

Skepticism is a virtue in history as well as in philosophy.

It’s really easy to have a nice philosophy about openness, but moving the world in that direction is a different thing. It requires both understanding where you want to go and being pragmatic about getting there.

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and establishing those properties by experiments, and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them.

Crime when it succeeds is called virtue.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?

Religions get lost as people do.

I believe in believing. My coach John Kavanagh is a big atheist, and he is always trying to persuade people to his way of thinking, and I think, ‚What a waste of energy.‘ If people want to believe in this god or that god, that’s fine by me; believe away. But I think we can be our own gods. I believe in myself.

I’ve always felt like there was a lot of hype around me even when there wasn’t. I felt like everyone was talking about me even when no one was talking about me.

The philosophical idea that there are no more distances, that we are all just one world, that we are all brothers, is such a drag! I like differences.

Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

Culture: the cry of men in face of their destiny.

People may think I’m trying something new by telling stories, but they’re just jokes connected to give the illusion of stories. But really, I just continue using my imagination and creating. That’s what I do.

The way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye of Reason.

I grow daily to honour facts more and more, and theory less and less. A fact, it seems to me, is a great thing; a sentence printed, if not by God, then at least by the Devil.

Time is compressed like the fist I close on my knee… I hold inside it the clues and solutions and the power for what I must do now.

The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is comprehensible.

A lost battle is a battle one thinks one has lost.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one’s death, one dies one’s life.

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

We hear only those questions for which we are in a position to find answers.

Ordinary people seem not to realize that those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death.

I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.

How sweet is the perception of a new natural fact!

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

We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s ‚Pensees‘ and read, ‚I am the great silent spaces between worlds.‘

All cruel people describe themselves as paragons of frankness.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

Life is warfare.

That God does not exist, I cannot deny, That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.

There is a tide in the affairs of men, Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat. And we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

We awaken in others the same attitude of mind we hold toward them.

The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.

From such crooked wood as that which man is made of, nothing straight can be fashioned.

Theology is unnecessary.

The fool wonders, the wise man asks.

No man enjoys the true taste of life, but he who is ready and willing to quit it.

To know, is to know that you know nothing. That is the meaning of true knowledge.

From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane.

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.

Funny thing is that the poorer people are, the more generous they seem to be.

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.

There is no unique picture of reality.

When the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.

Such as we are made of, such we be.

Who shall decide when doctors disagree, And soundest casuists doubt, like you and me?

If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes.

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

Fear cannot be without hope nor hope without fear.

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.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

Journalism is popular, but it is popular mainly as fiction. Life is one world, and life seen in the newspapers is another.