Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction.

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

My advice to you is get married: if you find a good wife you’ll be happy; if not, you’ll become a philosopher.

The seductive appeal of objective reality depends on a mistake. It is not the given. Sometimes ... the truth is not found by traveling as far away from one's personal perspective as possible.

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

Do you know I've been sitting here thinking to myself: that if I didn't believe in life, if I lost faith in the woman I love, lost faith in the order of things, were convinced, in fact, that everything is a disorderly, damnable, and perhaps devil-ridden chaos, if I were struck by every horror of man's disillusionment- still I should want to live and, having once tasted of the cup, I would not turn away from it till I had drained it. … It's not a matter of intellect or logic, it's loving with one's inside, with one's stomach.

If a statement is made, it is to be confronted with the totality of existing statements. If it agrees with them, it is joined to them; if it does not agree, it is called 'untrue' and rejected; or the existing complex of statements of science is modified so that the new statement can be incorporated.

The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance.

If one thinks about it logically, it seems as though death should be something to be afraid of only if we will survive it, and perhaps undergo some terrible transformation. But that doesn't prevent many people from thinking that annihilation is one of the worst things that could happen to them.

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it.