In philosophy, when we make use of false principles, we depart the farther from the knowledge of truth and wisdom exactly in proportion to the care with which we cultivate them, and apply ourselves to the deduction of diverse consequences from them, thinking that we are philosophizing well, while we are only departing the farther from the truth; from which it must be inferred that they who have learned the least of all that has been hitherto distinguished by the name of philosophy are the most fitted for the apprehension of truth.

There is a great difference between mind and body insomuch as body is by nature always divisible, and the mind is entirely indivisible.

Because reason...is the only thing that makes us men, and distinguishes us from the beasts, I would prefer to believe that it exists, in its entirety, in each of us.

You just keep pushing. You just keep pushing. I made every mistake that could be made. But I just kept pushing.

Everything is self-evident.

Everybody thinks himself so well supplied with common sense that even those most difficult to please. . . never desire more of it than they already have.

If I found any new truths in the sciences, I can say that they follow from, or depend on, five or six principal problems which I succeeded in solving and which I regard as so many battles where the fortunes of war were on my side.