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.

Happy life and merciful death

Revolution is a trivial shift in the emphasis of suffering.

I never think of myself as wise. 

I think of myself as possessing a critical intelligence 

which I intend to allow to operate.

My soul, do not seek eternal life, 

but exhaust the realm of the possible.

And just when you mean to tell her 

That you have no love to give her 

Then she gets you on her wavelength 

And she lets the river answer 

That you've always been her lover 

And you want to travel with her 

And you want to travel blind 

And you know that she will trust you 

For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.

One thing I have learned in a long life: 

that all our science, measured against reality, is primitive and childlike 

and yet it is the most precious thing we have.

Science, like art, religion, commerce, warfare, and even sleep, is based on presuppositions.

Wise men speak because they have something to say; 

Fools because they have to say something.

Beware the barrenness of a busy life.

Be not ashamed of mistakes 

and thus make them crimes.