Life is nasty, brutish, and short

Religions are like pills, which must be swallowed whole without chewing.

No Discourse whatsoever, can End in absolute Knowledge of Fact.

The first and fundamental law of Nature, which is, to seek peace and follow it.

Fear of things invisible is the natural seed of that which everyone in himself calleth religion.

There is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.

By this we may understand, there be two sorts of knowledge, whereof the one is nothing else but sense, or knowledge original (as I have said at the beginning of the second chapter), and remembrance of the same; the other is called science or knowledge of the truth of propositions, and how things are called, and is derived from understanding.