And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? 

Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

It is not once nor twice but times without number 

that the same ideas make their appearance in the world.

Full circle, 

from the tomb of the womb to the womb of the tomb, 

we come: 

an ambiguous enigmatic incursion into a world of solid matter that is soon to melt from us, 

like the substance of a dream.

The dark night of the soul comes just before revelation. 

When everything is lost, and all seems darkness, 

then comes the new life and all that is needed.

The unfolding through time of all things from one 

is the simple message, finally, 

of every one of the creation myths ... 

including that of our contemporary biological view, 

which becomes an effective mythic image 

the moment we recognise its own inner mystery.

The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,

on the surface of a gas covered planet

going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away

and think this to be normal

is obviously some indication

of how skewed our perspective tends to be.

A man of genius makes no mistakes; 

his errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.

Myth is much more important and true than history. 

History is just journalism 

and you know how reliable that is.

Intellectual growth should commence at birth 

and cease only at death.

Compassion is the basis of morality.

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision 

for the limits of the world.

Employ your time in improving yourself by other men's writings 

so that you shall come easily by what others have laboured hard for.

An intellectual dictator is not a sympathetic figure —

even when he has risen from humble beginnings.

Merely having an open mind is nothing; 

the object of opening the mind, 

as of opening the mouth, 

is to shut it again on something solid.

One cannot step twice in the same river.

The god you worship 

is the god you deserve.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Be as you wish to seem.

Now my own suspicion is that 

the Universe is not only queerer than we suppose, 

but queerer than we can suppose.

Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge: 

it is those who know little, and not those who know much, 

who so positively assert that this or that problem will never be solved by science.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. 

But without it we go nowhere.

Science is organised knowledge. 

Wisdom is organised life.

The essence of life 

is statistical improbability 

on a colossal scale.

We need creativity 

in order to break free from the temporary structures 

that have been set up by a particular sequence of experience.

The difficulty lies, 

not in the new ideas, 

but in escaping the old ones, 

which ramify, 

for those brought up as most of us have been, 

into every corner of our minds.

Science is what you know. 

Philosophy is what you don't know.

Wherever the poetry of myth is interpreted
as biography, history, or science, 

it is killed.

Eternity is a dimension of here and now.

But the life of a man 

is of no greater importance to the universe 

than that of an oyster.

The teacher who is indeed wise 

does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom 

but rather 

leads you to the threshold of your mind.

Myths are clues 

to the spiritual potentialities 

of the human life.

Stretching his hand out to catch the stars, 

he forgets the flowers at his feet.

Opposites are complementary.

The myths are clues 

to unite the forces within us.

The only source of knowledge is experience…

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

Philosophy begins in wonder.  

And, at the end, 

when philosophic thought has done its best, 

the wonder remains.

It's like our visit to the moon
or to that other star 

I guess you go for nothing
if you really want to go that far.

Reality is merely an illusion, 

albeit a very persistent one.

From Pythagoras 

(whether by way of Socrates or not) 

Plato derived the Orphic elements in his philosophy: 

the religious trend, 

the belief in immortality, 

the other-worldliness, 

the priestly tone, 

and all that is involved in the simile of the cave; 

also his respect for mathematics, 

and his intermingling of intellect and mysticism.

Modern Protestants who urge us to believe in God, for the most part, despise the old ‘proofs’, 

and base their faith upon some aspect of human nature — 

emotions of awe or mystery, the sense of right and wrong, the feeling of aspiration, and so on.  

This way of defending religious belief was invented by Rousseau.

Science is a small island in an ocean of nescience.

Don't you let the bastards bring you down

Just stand up strong and bold

Mathematics is, I believe, the chief source of the belief in eternal and exact truth, 

as well as the super-sensible intelligible world. 

 Geometry deals with exact circles, but no sensible object is exactly circular; 

however carefully we may use our compasses, there will be some imperfections and irregularities. 

 This suggests the view that all exact reasoning applies to ideal as opposed to sensible objects; 

it is natural to go further and to argue that thought is nobler than sense, 

and the objects of thought are more real than those of sense-perception.

Mathematical knowledge appeared to be certain, exact, 

and applicable to the real world; 

moreover it was obtained by mere thinking, 

without the need for observation. 

 Consequently, it was thought to supply an ideal, 

from which every-day empirical knowledge fell short. 

 It was supposed, on the basis of mathematics, 

that thought is superior to sense, 

intuition to observation.

The sparkle in your eyes

Keeps me alive

And the sparkle in your eyes

Keeps me alive, keeps me alive

The fire in your eyes

Keeps me alive

And the fire in your eyes

Keeps me alive

Any hypothesis, however absurd, may be useful in science, 

if it enables a discoverer to conceive things in a new way; 

but … when it has served this purpose by luck, 

it is likely to become an obstacle to further advance.

The distinction between mind and matter, 

which has become a commonplace in philosophy and science and popular thought, 

has a religious origin, 

and began as the distinction between soul and body. 

The Orphic proclaims himself the child of earth and of the starry heaven; 

from earth comes the body, 

from heaven the soul.

The pursuit of truth, when it is whole-hearted, must ignore moral considerations; 

we cannot know in advance that the truth will turn out to be what is thought edifying in a given society.

When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd,

we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true,

but we should try to understand how it ever came to seem true.