To call the world God is not to explain it; it is only to enrich our language with a superfluous synonym.

There is not a grain of dust, not an atom that can become nothing, yet man believes that death is the annhilation of his being.

It is the courage to make a clean breast of it in the face of every question that makes the philosopher. He must be like Sophocles' Oedipus, who, seeking enlightenment concerning his terrible fate, pursues his indefatigable inquiry even though he divines that appalling horror awaits him in the answer. But most of us carry with us the Jocasta in our hearts, who begs Oedipus, for God's sake, not to inquire further.

The principle of contradiction establishes merely the agreement of concepts, but does not itself produce concepts.

Boredom is an evil that is not to be estimated lightly. It can come in the end to real despair. The public authority takes precautions against it everywhere, as against other universal calamities.

Knowledge is to certain extent a second existence.

There are three stages in the revelation of truth. The first is to be ridiculed, the second is to be resisted and the third is to be considered self-evident.