I am not sure whether ethical absolutes exist. But I am sure that we have to act as if they existed or civilization perishes.
Coincidence may be described as the chance encounter of two unrelated causal chains which.
Laughter and weeping, the Greek masks of comedy and tragedy, mark the extremes of a continuous spectrum; both provide channels for the overflow of emotion; both are.
When reality becomes unbearable, the mind must withdraw from it and create a world of artificial perfection. Plato’s world of pure Ideas and Forms, which alone is to be considered as real, whereas the world of nature which we perceive is merely its cheap Woolworth copy, is a flight into delusion.
The ‘missing link’ between ape and man will probably never be found- because it was an embryo.
Einstein’s space is no closer to reality than Van Gogh’s sky.
The individual is not a killer, but the group is, and by identifying with it the individual is transformed into a killer.
The more backwoodish a social group, juvenile or adult, the stricter its conception of the normal, and the readier it will ridicule any departure from it.
Two half truths do not make a truth.
War is a ritual, a deadly ritual, not the result of aggressive self-assertion, but of self-transcending identification. Without loyalty to tribe, church, flag or ideal, there would be no wars.
The discoveries of yesterday are the truisms of tomorrow, because we can add to our knowledge but cannot subtract from it.
Most of us were not afraid of death, only of the act of dying; and there were times when we overcame even this fear. At such moments we were free-men without shadows, dismissed from the ranks of the mortal; it was the most complete experience of freedom that can be granted a man.
Death tripped down the corridor, changing step, struck out here and there, danced pirouettes; often I felt his breath on my face when he was miles away; often I fell asleep and dreamed while he stood leaning over my bed.
God is dethroned; and although the incognizant masses are tardy in realizing the event, they feel the icy draught caused by that vacancy. Man enters upon a spiritual ice age; the established churches can no longer provide more than Eskimo huts where their shivering flock huddles together.
Aggressiveness is not the main trouble with the human species, but rather an excess capacity for fanatical devotion.
Learn from the mistakes of others. You can’t live long enough to make them all yourself. Boredom sets into boring minds. The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.
Adolescence is a kind of emotional seasickness. Both are funny, but only in retrospect.
The temptations of God were always more dangerous for mankind than those of Satan.
Chemically induced hallucinations, delusions and raptures may be frightening or wonderfully gratifying; in either case they are in the nature of confidence tricks played on one’s own nervous system.
The purposiveness of all vital processes, the strategy of the genes and the power of the exploratory drive in animal and man, all seem to indicate that the pull of the future is as real as the pressure of the past.