Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.
And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence.
Patience and boredom are closely related. Boredom, a certain kind of boredom, is really impatience. You don’t like the way things are, they aren’t interesting enough for you, so you deccide- and boredom is a decision-that you are bored.
Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it.
Love should be a tree whose roots are deep in the earth, but whose branches extend into heaven.
Some people would rather die than think.
Love is wise – Hatred is foolish.
If you had the power to destroy the world, would you do so?
Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable.
If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.
Every advance in civilization has been denounced as unnatural while it was recent.
Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos.
Mysticism is, in essence, little more than a certain intensity and depth of feeling in regard to what is believed about the universe.
When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.
Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.
If we spent half an hour every day in silent immobility, I am convinced that we should conduct all our affairs, personal, national, and international, far more sanely than we do at present.
I resolved from the beginning of my quest that I would not be misled by sentiment and desire into beliefs for which there was no good evidence.
All’s well that ends well; which is the epitaph I should put on my tombstone if I were the last man left alive.
We all have a tendency to think that the world must conform to our prejudices. The opposite view involves some effort of thought, and most people would die sooner than think in fact they do so.
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.