If everything has a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just be the world as God.

The immense majority of intellectually eminent men disbelieve in the Christian religion, but they conceal the fact in public, because they are afraid of losing their incomes.

When we have told how things behave when they are electrified, and under what circumstances they are electrified, we have told all there is to know

One of the most powerful of all our passions is the desire to be admired and respected.

If we were all given by magic the power to read each other’s thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be almost all friendships would be dissolved; the second effect, however, might be excellent, for a world without any friends would be felt to be intolerable, and we should learn to like each other without needing a veil of illusion to conceal from ourselves that we did not think each other absolutely perfect.

When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us.

Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.