Education is the period during which you are being instructed by somebody you do not know, about something you do not want to know.

Men can construct a science with very few instruments, or with very plain instruments; but no one on earth could construct a science with unreliable instruments. A man might work out the whole of mathematics with a handful of pebbles, but not with a handful of clay which was always falling apart into new fragments, and falling together into new combinations. A man might measure heaven and earth with a reed, but not with a growing reed.

Your next-door neighbor is not a man; he is an environment. He is the barking of a dog; he is the noise of a piano; he is a dispute about a party wall; he is drains that are worse than yours, or roses that are better than yours.

I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite.

If a man does not talk to himself, it is because he is not worth talking to.

When a man ceases to believe in god, he does not believe in nothing. He believes in everything.

It's the first effect of not believing in God that you lose your common sense.