Existence precedes and rules essence.

Only on the edge of the grave can man conclude anything.

If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yi, and then I might come to be without great faults.

Everything passes. Nobody gets anything for keeps. And that’s how we’ve got to live.

Love is anterior to life, posterior to death, initial of creation, and the exponent of breath.

Truths and roses have thorns about them.

Knowledge is knowing that we cannot know.

Without gambling, I would not exist.

Certain defects are necessary for the existence of individuality.

The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It’s a battle you can’t hope to win – it’s a battle that’s going to go on forever. It’s part of the human condition.

I’m an atheist, and the concept of god for me is all part of what I call ‚the last illusion.‘ The last illusion is someone knows what is going on. Nearly everyone has that illusion somewhere, and it manifests not only in the terms of the idea that there is a god but that it knows what’s going on but that the planets know what’s going on.

The ‚I think‘ which Kant said must be able to accompany all my objects, is the ‚I breathe‘ which actually does accompany them.

‚Pure experience‘ is the name I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.

Information is not knowledge.

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

It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

I have noticed even people who claim everything is predestined, and that we can do nothing to change it, look before they cross the road.

Reason has always existed, but not always in a reasonable form.

A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

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

Man is unable to see himself entirely unrelated to mankind, neither is he able to see mankind unrelated to life, nor life unrelated to the universe.

All things in the world come from being. And being comes from non-being.

Whatsoever is, is in God, and without God nothing can be, or be conceived.

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

We can come to look upon the deaths of our enemies with as much regret as we feel for those of our friends, namely, when we miss their existence as witnesses to our success.

Science is nothing but perception.

Atheism shows strength of mind, but only to a certain degree.

I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.

It is a common saying, and in everybody’s mouth, that life is but a sojourn.

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.

Man weeps to think that he will die so soon; woman, that she was born so long ago.

I have been struck again and again by how important measurement is to improving the human condition.

Never in any case say I have lost such a thing, but I have returned it. Is your child dead? It is a return. Is your wife dead? It is a return. Are you deprived of your estate? Is not this also a return?

To abandon oneself to principles is really to die – and to die for an impossible love which is the contrary of love.

Mystical explanations are thought to be deep; the truth is that they are not even shallow.

Law is mind without reason.

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.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.

I am an Epicurean. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greek and Roman leave to us.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

Life is hard. After all, it kills you.

I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one’s memories.

He who can be, and therefore is, another’s, and he who participates in reason enough to apprehend, but not to have, is a slave by nature.

There is a blessed necessity by which the interest of men is always driving them to the right; and, again, making all crime mean and ugly.

Not life, but good life, is to be chiefly valued.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

I existed from all eternity and, behold, I am here; and I shall exist till the end of time, for my being has no end.

Nature puts no question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her resolution.

Each life makes its own immitation of immortality.

Misfortune seldom intrudes upon the wise man; his greatest and highest interests are directed by reason throughout the course of life.

Depend upon it that if a man talks of his misfortunes there is something in them that is not disagreeable to him; for where there is nothing but pure misery there never is any recourse to the mention of it.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

Error is always more busy than truth.

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.

As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill us for their sport.

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.

If one has a good disposition, what other virtue is needed? If a man has fame, what is the value of other ornamentation?

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

Blessedness is not the reward of virtue but virtue itself.

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.