philosophy
“What is this world of ours? … a fleeting symmetry; a momentary order.”
“Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a deity.”
“The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an Agnostic.”
“No more useful inquiry can be proposed than that which seeks to determine the nature and the scope of human knowledge.”
“So blind is the curiosity by which mortals are possessed, that they often conduct their minds along unexplored routes.”
“Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion.”
“It is the property of gods to need nothing, and of godlike men to want but little.”
“Freedom is the insight into necessity.”
“Thinking in its lower grades is comparable to paper money; in its higher forms it is a kind of poetry.”
“We are always at war with the idea that there is a single truth.”
“Analogies prove nothing, that is quite true, but they can make one feel more at home.”
“We dance round in a ring and suppose, but the Secret sits in the middle and knows.”
“A humanist has four leading characteristics — curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race.”
“Immature love says: I love you because I need you. Mature love says: I need you because I love you.”
“The 'paradox' is only a conflict between reality and your feeling of what reality 'ought to be.'”
“There has been an inversion in the hierarchy of the two principles of antiquity, 'Take care of yourself' and 'Know yourself.'”
“A critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions the practices that we accept rest.”
“The soul is the prison of the body.”
“Death destroys a man: the idea of death saves him.”
“Knowledge is not made for understanding; it is made for cutting.”