What goes up must come down.

Call it Nature, Fate, Fortune; all these are names of the one and selfsame God.

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

Being is. Being is in-itself. Being is what it is.

Just as the system of the sun, planets and comets is put in motion by the forces of gravity, and its parts persist in their motions, so the smaller systems of bodies also seem to be set in motion by other forces and their particles to be variously moved in relation to each other and, especially, by the electric force.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

The lie is a condition of life.

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

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.

Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.

The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.

To free a person from error is to give, and not to take away.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality.

Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.

It is always consoling to think of suicide: in that way one gets through many a bad night.

Things are more like they are now than they ever were before.

I want to know all Gods thoughts; all the rest are just details.

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

When you cease to exist, then who will you blame?

It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.

The last act is bloody, however pleasant all the rest of the play is: a little earth is thrown at last upon our head, and that is the end forever.

Nature is not human hearted.

We are much beholden to Machiavel and others, that write what men do, and not what they ought to do.

The desire to annoy no one, to harm no one, can equally well be the sign of a just as of an anxious disposition.

Religion is part of the human make-up. It’s also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.

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

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

The greatest progress is in the sciences that study the simplest systems. So take, say, physics – greatest progress there. But one of the reasons is that the physicists have an advantage that no other branch of sciences has. If something gets too complicated, they hand it to someone else.

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

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves?

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

The drawing teacher has this problem of communicating how to draw by osmosis and not by instruction, while the physics teacher has the problem of always teaching techniques, rather than the spirit, of how to go about solving physical problems.

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. Yet his shadow still looms. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives; who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves?

If co-operation is a duty, I hold that non-co-operation also under certain conditions is equally a duty.

Here’s the thing with me and the religious thing. This is the flat-out truth: I find the religiosity and philosophy in the music. I don’t find it anywhere else.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

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

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world.

Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.

I think one’s feelings waste themselves in words; they ought all to be distilled into actions which bring results.

If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?

Surely God would not have created such a being as man, with an ability to grasp the infinite, to exist only for a day! No, no, man was made for immortality.

What do I care about the purring of one who cannot love, like the cat?

I had rather believe all the Fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a Mind.

Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.

I never considered a difference of opinion in politics, in religion, in philosophy, as cause for withdrawing from a friend.

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.

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

I believe Karl Marx could have subscribed to the Sermon on the Mount.

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?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

To appreciate the noble is a gain which can never be torn from us.

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.

God is a comedian, playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.

If two men agree on everything, you may be sure that one of them is doing the thinking.

He alone is free who lives with free consent under the entire guidance of reason.

I’m fascinated by the fact that we can’t grasp anything about time.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

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.

Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.