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.

When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.

Enjoy present pleasures in such a way as not to injure future ones.

He who knows nothing is nearer the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

A lie told often enough becomes the truth.

If there were no eternal consciousness in a man, if at the foundation of all there lay only a wildly seething power which writhing with obscure passions produced everything that is great and everything that is insignificant, if a bottomless void never satiated lay hidden beneath all -- what then would life be but despair?

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.