We must accept what science tells us, that man was born from the earth. But, more logical than the scientists who lecture us, we must carry this lesson to its conclusion: that is to say, accept that man was born entirely from the world – not only his flesh and bones but his incredible power of thought.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

Rules are not necessarily sacred, principles are.

The function of wisdom is to discriminate between good and evil.

But although all our knowledge begins with experience, it does not follow that it arises from experience.

All writers are going to have to learn more about science, because it’s such an interesting part of their environment.

We are long before we are convinced that happiness is never to be found, and each believes it possessed by others, to keep alive the hope of obtaining it for himself.

I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.

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.

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Our existence is beyond our explanation, whether we believe in God or we have religion or we’re atheist. Our existence is beyond our understanding. No one has an answer.

I think that there is nothing, not even crime, more opposed to poetry, to philosophy, ay, to life itself than this incessant business.

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.

First and last, what is demanded of genius is love of truth.

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

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.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

We will explore the mysteries of science and harness the power of technology and innovation. We will realise the opportunities of the digital world. Our youth will learn more from – and with – each other.

The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

My philosophy in life is, Decide what you want to do. You have to have something to hope for.

Dr. Karel Culik is an outstanding applied mathematician, a specialist in algebra, logic, computer sciences and mathematical linguistics. In 1965, he visited the linguistics research program at MIT, and we have worked together on several projects since.

I have never entered into any controversy in defense of my philosophical opinions; I leave them to take their chance in the world. If they are right, truth and experience will support them; if wrong, they ought to be refuted and rejected. Disputes are apt to sour one’s temper and disturb one’s quiet.

I am against nature. I don’t dig nature at all. I think nature is very unnatural. I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can’t touch with decay.

The state comes into existence for the sake of life and continues to exist for the sake of good life.

Nature is ever at work building and pulling down, creating and destroying, keeping everything whirling and flowing, allowing no rest but in rhythmical motion, chasing everything in endless song out of one beautiful form into another.

All nature is but art unknown to thee.

There is nothing besides a spiritual world; what we call the world of the senses is the Evil in the spiritual world, and what we call Evil is only the necessity of a moment in our eternal evolution.

The history of philosophy is to a great extent that of a certain clash of human temperaments.

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

Does wisdom perhaps appear on the earth as a raven which is inspired by the smell of carrion?

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

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.

To do all that one is able to do, is to be a man; to do all that one would like to do, is to be a god.

A God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but fate and nature.

I was never ignorant, as far as being experienced in classrooms and learning about different subjects and actually soaking it up, so I checked into college for a little bit. I took classes at a community college in West L.A. I took psychology, English, and philosophy.

All men by nature desire knowledge.

The unnatural, that too is natural.

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?

Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.

There are men so philosophical that they can see humor in their own toothaches. But there has never lived a man so philosophical that he could see the toothache in his own humor.

Each man is always in the middle of the surface of the earth and under the zenith of his own hemisphere, and over the centre of the earth.

If my survival caused another to perish, then death would be sweeter and more beloved.

The distinction between the past, present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

It’s not worth doing something unless you were doing something that someone, somewere, would much rather you weren’t doing.

In a way, the whole tangible universe itself is a vast residue, a skeleton of countless lives that have germinated in it and have left it, leaving behind them only a trifling, infinitesimal part of their riches.

The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.

Peace is liberty in tranquillity.

The first book I ever really read was Plato’s ‚Republic,‘ and then I had to go over that five times or something.

No evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. He and his are not neglected by the gods.

I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.

Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey cage.

My philosophy is, it’s always very rewarding when you can make an audience laugh. I don’t mind making fun of myself. I like self-deprecating comedy. But I’d like you to laugh with me occasionally, too.

The over-all point is that new technology will not necessarily replace old technology, but it will date it. By definition. Eventually, it will replace it. But it’s like people who had black-and-white TVs when color came out. They eventually decided whether or not the new technology was worth the investment.

The Tao teaches us not to intervene and interfere. The things we love we have to learn to leave alone. And the people we love we have to learn to let them be.

It is only the modern that ever becomes old-fashioned.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena.

Temperance is a mean with regard to pleasures.

The worst form of inequality is to try to make unequal things equal.