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.

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

My goal is simple. It is complete understanding of the universe, why it as it is and why it exists at all.

Time makes more converts than reason.

The atoms or the elementary particles are not real; they form a world of potentialities and possibilities rather than one of things or facts.

The more the ordinary mind takes the opposition between true and false to be fixed, the more is it accustomed to expect either agreement or contradiction with a given philosophical system, and only to see reason for the one or the other in any explanatory statement concerning such a system. It does not conceive the diversity of philosophical systems as the progressive evolution of truth; rather, it sees only contradiction in that variety.

There will be no end to the troubles of states, or of humanity itself, till philosophers become kings in this world, or till those we now call kings and rulers really and truly become philosophers, and political power and philosophy thus come into the same hands.

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.

Some writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins.

The question of whether from a complete knowledge of the past we can predict the future, does not arise because a complete knowledge of the past involves a self-contradiction.