The first principle is that you must not fool yourself 

and you are the easiest person to fool.

To be happy at home is the ultimate result of all ambition, 

the end to which every enterprise and labour tends, 

and of which every desire prompts the prosecution.

To care less for the truth 

than for what people think 

is a coward's part.

Evolution is a tightly coupled dance, 

with life and the material environment as partners. 

From the dance emerges the entity Gaia.

I heard the old, old, men say 

'all that's beautiful drifts away, 

like the waters.'

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. 

What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.

Everything becomes a little different 

as soon as it is spoken out loud.

Participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world. 

We cannot cure the world of sorrows, 

but we can choose to live in joy.

The man of science has learned to believe in justification, 

not by faith, 

but by verification.

All paid jobs absorb and degrade the mind.

It is too difficult to think nobly 

when one thinks only of earning a living.

If we were all given 

by magic 

the power to read each other's thoughts, 

I suppose the first effect would be 

to dissolve all friendships.

Pleasure is spread through the earth

In stray gifts to be claimed by whoever shall find.

In science 

the important thing 

is to modify and change one's ideas 

as science advances.

Science, like life, feeds on its own decay. 

New facts burst old rules; 

then newly divined conceptions bind old and new together 

into a reconciling law.

Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth 

by calling imagination to the help of reason.

Do not believe in anything 

simply because you have heard it. 

Do not believe in anything 

simply because it is spoken and rumoured by many. 

Do not believe in anything 

simply because it is found written in your religious books. 

Do not believe in anything 

merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. 

Do not believe in traditions 

because they have been handed down for many generations. 

But after observation and analysis, 

when you find that anything agrees with reason 

and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, 

then accept it and live up to it.

We can be knowledgeable with other men's knowledge, 

but we cannot be wise with other men's wisdom.

Good for the body is the work of the body, 

and good for the soul is the work of the soul, 

and good for either is the work of the other.

Out of the quarrel with others 

we make rhetoric; 

out of the quarrel with ourselves 

we make poetry.

Physics is mathematical 

not because we know so much 

about the physical world, 

but because we know so little; 

it is only its mathematical properties 

that we can discover.

Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, 

but upon error also.

Adopt the pace of nature: 

her secret is patience.

Reading without reflecting 

is like 

eating without digesting.

Poetry is what gets lost in translation.

I don't paint things. 

I only paint 

the difference 

between things.

An experiment is a question which science poses to Nature, 

and a measurement is the recording of Nature's answer.

Scientific principles and laws do not lie on the surface of nature. 

They are hidden, 

and must be wrested from nature 

by an active and elaborate technique of inquiry.

To teach how to live with uncertainty, 

yet without being paralysed by hesitation, 

is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy can do.

The forceps of our minds are clumsy things 

and crush the truth a little 

in the course of taking hold of it.

The improver of natural science 

absolutely refuses to acknowledge authority, as such. 

For him, scepticism is the highest of duties: 

blind faith the one unpardonable sin.

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, 

and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

The sun, 

with all those planets revolving around it 

and dependent on it, 

can still ripen a bunch of grapes 

as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

What is the first business of philosophy?
 To part with self-conceit.
 For it is impossible for anyone to begin to learn
what he thinks that he already knows.

Observations always involve theory.

The point of philosophy 

is to start with something so simple 

as not to seem worth stating, 

and to end with something so paradoxical 

that no one will believe it.

Men love to wonder, 

and that is the seed of science.

Neque porro quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum 

quia dolor sit amet, 

consectetur, 

adipisci velit. 

There is no one who loves pain itself, 

who seeks after it and wants to have it, 

simply because it is pain.

Virtue is nothing else than right reason.

Happiness is the highest good.

If you would be a real seeker after truth, 

it is necessary that at least once in your life 

you doubt, as far as possible, all things.

It is one thing to show a man that he is in error, 

and another to put him in possession of truth.

Happiness lies in virtuous activity, 

and perfect happiness lies in the best activity, 

which is contemplative.

Everything that exists 

is born for no reason, 

carries on living through weakness, 

and dies by accident.

It is undesirable to believe a proposition 

when there is no ground whatever 

for supposing it true.

Biology is the study of the complex things in the Universe. 

Physics is the study of the simple ones.

To be is to be perceived