Seek simplicity but distrust it.

Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.

What is morality in any given time or place? It is what the majority then and there happen to like and immorality is what they dislike.

Wisdom alone is true ambition's aim, wisdom is the source of virtue and of fame; obtained with labour, for mankind employed, and then, when most you share it, best enjoyed.

True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.

The vitality of thought is in adventure. Ideas won't keep. Something must be done about them. When the idea is new, its custodians have fervor, live for it, and if need be, die for it.

There are no whole truths: all truths are half-truths. It is trying to treat them as whole truths that plays to the devil.

We think in generalities, but we live in detail.

The total absence of humor from the Bible is one of the most singular things in all literature.

Our minds are finite, and yet even in these circumstances of finitude we are surrounded by possibilities that are infinite, and the purpose of life is to grasp as much as we can out of that infinitude.

Periods of tranquility are seldom prolific of creative achievement. Mankind has to be stirred up.

Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains.

Philosophy is the product of wonder.

Speak out in acts; the time for words has passed, and only deeds will suffice.

Simple solutions seldom are. It takes a very unusual mind to undertake analysis of the obvious.