Wisdom alone is the science of other sciences.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

A lot of truth is said in jest.

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.

Some people see things that are and ask, Why? Some people dream of things that never were and ask, Why not? Some people have to go to work and don’t have time for all that.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.

Modern cynics and skeptics… see no harm in paying those to whom they entrust the minds of their children a smaller wage than is paid to those to whom they entrust the care of their plumbing.

The truth is lived, not taught.

God has already done everything He’s going to do. The ball is now in your court. If you want success, if you want wisdom, if you want to be prosperous and healthy, you’re going to have to do more than meditate and believe; you must boldly declare words of faith and victory over yourself and your family.

As far as I’m concerned, I prefer silent vice to ostentatious virtue.

A word to the wise is infuriating.

Do I dare set forth here the most important, the most useful rule of all education? It is not to save time, but to squander it.

Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.

Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe.

No school of philosophy has ever solved this question of whether being determines consciousness or the other way around. It may be a false antithesis.

I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. ‚Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after you.

If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

All theory is against freedom of the will; all experience for it.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

Truth has no special time of its own. Its hour is now – always.

In order that all men may be taught to speak the truth, it is necessary that all likewise should learn to hear it.

Teaching is a very noble profession that shapes the character, caliber, and future of an individual. If the people remember me as a good teacher, that will be the biggest honour for me.

The word ‚belief‘ is a difficult thing for me. I don’t believe. I must have a reason for a certain hypothesis. Either I know a thing, and then I know it – I don’t need to believe it.

Absence and death are the same – only that in death there is no suffering.

For a highly motivated learner, it’s not like knowledge is secret and somehow the Internet made it not secret. It just made knowledge easy to find. If you’re a motivated enough learner, books are pretty good.

Light troubles speak; the weighty are struck dumb.

Toleration is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle.

The church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture.

We are all ready to be savage in some cause. The difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of the cause.

In the fight between you and the world, back the world.

Time stays, we go.

When it’s your time, it is your time.

Is evolution a theory, a system, or an hypothesis? It is much more: it is a general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true.

Man and animals are in reality vehicles and conduits of food, tombs of animals, hostels of Death, coverings that consume, deriving life by the death of others.

Pessimism is a luxury that a Jew can never allow himself.

If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them.

All men’s miseries derive from not being able to sit in a quiet room alone.

All sciences are now under the obligation to prepare the ground for the future task of the philosopher, which is to solve the problem of value, to determine the true hierarchy of values.

We have to live today by what truth we can get today and be ready tomorrow to call it falsehood.

It is said that the present is pregnant with the future.

I want to do a certain thing in the world, and I am going to do it with unwavering concentration. I am concerning myself with only one essential thing: to set man free. I desire to free him from all cages, from all fears, and not to found religions, new sects, nor to establish new theories and new philosophies.

May be is very well, but Must is the master. It is my duty to show justice without recompense.

The critic has to educate the public; the artist has to educate the critic.

It is only when we forget all our learning that we begin to know.

‚Tis education forms the common mind; just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.

My elder brothers were all put apprentices to different trades. I was put to the grammar-school at eight years of age, my father intending to devote me, as the tithe of his sons, to the service of the Church.

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

I think I’m pretty smart. I think I’m pretty clever. But there’s a lot that you hone in on when you finish your education.

I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.

His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even… knowledge, was foolproof.

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

God is a thought who makes crooked all that is straight.

Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.

From the middle of life onward, only he remains vitally alive who is ready to die with life.

I have found far greater enthusiasm for science in America than here in Britain. There is more enthusiasm for everything in America.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?