To discover and know has always been a deep tendency of our nature. Can we not recognize it already in caveman?

One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That’s how the human species has done as well as it has.

All this talk about equality. The only thing people really have in common is that they are all going to die.

Some people would claim that things like love, joy and beauty belong to a different category from science and can’t be described in scientific terms, but I think they can now be explained by the theory of evolution.

I was a smart kid, but I hated school.

I don’t like celebrity programmes – but I do like programmes about how ideas are formed and evolve.

We always deceive ourselves twice about the people we love – first to their advantage, then to their disadvantage.

If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.

Sometimes what works 40 years ago doesn’t work today.

There are trees of a thousand sorts, and all have their several fruits; and I feel the most unhappy man in the world not to know them, for I am well assured that they are all valuable. I bring home specimens of them, and also of the land.

Man is not born to atheism. He is born to believe.

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

For me, when you are have people wondering what is next, what is coming out, you are on the right track.

I never learn anything talking. I only learn things when I ask questions.

The true sign of intelligence is not knowledge but imagination.

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?

Temptation is an irresistible force at work on a movable body.

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

Those who have knowledge, don’t predict. Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.

Between the ages of fifteen and twenty-four, I must have read a whole library.

It makes a great deal of difference whether one wills not to sin or has not the knowledge to sin.

Knowledge becomes evil if the aim be not virtuous.

A little learning is a dangerous thing; Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.

It is paradoxical, yet true, to say, that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense, for it is only through enlightenment that we become conscious of our limitations. Precisely one of the most gratifying results of intellectual evolution is the continuous opening up of new and greater prospects.

The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them.

From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn.

Money has never made man happy, nor will it, there is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more of it one has the more one wants.

People who know little are usually great talkers, while men who know much say little.

There are worse crimes than burning books. One of them is not reading them.

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.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

I say there is no darkness but ignorance.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.

Knowledge of the past and of the places of the earth is the ornament and food of the mind of man.

The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or things is to get a definite outline of our ignorance.

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

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.

If one is master of one thing and understands one thing well, one has at the same time, insight into and understanding of many things.

No one even knows one percent of the fabulous history of Man; but thanks to history, we know about occurrences that go beyond the limits of the imaginable.

We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view.

The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.

He who knows best knows how little he knows.

All the evidence that we have indicates that it is reasonable to assume in practically every human being, and certainly in almost every newborn baby, that there is an active will toward health, an impulse towards growth, or towards the actualization.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

I guess when you turn off the main road, you have to be prepared to see some funny houses.

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.

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.

Men are so necessarily mad, that not to be mad would amount to another form of madness.

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

A physician is not angry at the intemperance of a mad patient, nor does he take it ill to be railed at by a man in fever. Just so should a wise man treat all mankind, as a physician does his patient, and look upon them only as sick and extravagant.

Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.

When you are asked if you can do a job, tell ‚em, ‚Certainly I can!‘ Then get busy and find out how to do it.

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.

Man becomes his most creative during war.

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man’s new sense of pity began to interfere with the ruthless workings of nature. As a result, we continue to keep alive and to breed the unfit.

If a man’s wit be wandering, let him study the mathematics.