What a blessing it would be if we could open and shut our ears...as easily as we open and shut our eyes.

Most subjects at universities are taught for no other purpose than that they may be re-taught when the students become teachers.

Just as there are polysyllabic words that say very little, so there are also monosyllabic words of infinite meaning.

To write brashly about some things, it is almost necessary not to know much about them.

Everyone is a genius at least once a year.

We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel for ourselves and to speak ourselves, and I might almost say to exist ourselves.

The fruits of philosophy are the important thing, not the philosophy itself. When we ask the time, we don't want to know how watches are made.