Quotes about Philosophy

The evidence, so far at least and laws of Nature aside, does not require a Designer. Maybe there is one hiding, maddeningly unwilling to be revealed. Sometimes it seems a very slender hope.

For the price of a modest meal you can ponder the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, the origin of species, the interpretation of dreams, the nature of things. Books are like seeds. They can lie dormant for centuries and then flower in the most unpromising soil.

Nietzsche mourns the loss of "man's belief in his dignity, his uniqueness, his irreplace-ability in the scheme of existence." For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

The fifth regular solid must then, they thought, correspond to some fifth element that could only be the substance of the heavenly bodies.

Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us—there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation, as if a distant memory, of falling from a height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.

How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and said, 'This is better than we thought! The universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed'?

We are like butterflies, who flutter for a day and think it's forever.

The electron is first of all your concept of the electron.

Death is essential to making life possible. Death is transformation. Death is continuation. When we die, something else is born, even if it takes time to reveal itself or for us to be able to recognize it.

Life is short; it must not be spent in endless metaphysical speculations which will not be able to bring us the Truth.

The cry of revolt against such a god [a god which just affirms the world as it is] is nearer the truth than is the sophistry with which men attempt to justify him....

The task of the theologian is to explain everything through God, and to explain God as unexplainable.