“An educated mind is, as it were, composed of all the minds of preceding ages.”

In vain we shall penetrate more and more deeply the secrets of the structure of the human body, we shall not dupe nature; we shall die as usual.

Let us be well assured of the Matter of Fact, before we trouble our selves with enquiring into the Cause. It is true, that this Method is too slow for the greatest part of Mankind, who run naturally to the Cause, and pass over the Truth of the Matter of Fact.

Ah! si l’on o” tait les chime’ res aux hommes, quel plaisir leur resterait? Oh! If man were robbed of his fantasies, what pleasure would be left him?

I hate war, for it spoils conversation.

Nature intends that, at fixed periods, men should succeed each other by the instrumentality of death. We shall never outwit Nature; we shall die as usual.

Modesty in women has two special advantages,–it enhances beauty and veils uncomeliness.

Behold a universe so immense that I am lost in it. I no longer know where I am. I am just nothing at all. Our world is terrifying in its insignificance.

I shall leave the world without regret, for it hardly contains a single good listener.

If I held all the thoughts of the world in my hand, I would be careful not to open it.

I detest war; it ruins conversation

The Art of Flying is but newly invented, twill improve by degrees, and in time grow perfect; then we may fly as far as the Moon.

It is a great obstacle to happiness to expect too much.

There is nothing one sees oftener than the ridiculous and magnificent, such close neighbors that they touch.

To despise theory is to have the excessively vain pretension to do without knowing what one does, and to speak without knowing what one says.

It is high time for me to depart, for at my age I now begin to see things as they really are.

Les vrais philosophes sont comme les e le phants, qui en marchant ne posent jamais le second pied a’ terre que le premier ne soit bien affermi. True philosophers are like elephants, who when walking never placetheir second footontheground untilthefirst is steady.

The thing is that people have been educated or miseducated or brainwashed into believing that this is wayyyy too complicated for regular people to understand and that we need to let PhD economists guide us along in terms of what’s right… and that’s all bull.

At the moment about 350,000 students return to China from abroad each year – 350,000 young and educated people. I know about them because they know me and often ask me in the street if they can take a selfie with me.

I’d been educated stupidly, I knew nothing about nothing, that’s part of being shy.

A secure pluralistic society requires communities that are educated and confident both in the identity and depth of their own traditions and in those of their neighbours.

In a society where some people are far more educated than others, in which public education is ill-funded – here I am speaking of the U.S. – while we build more and more prisons to incarcerate youth who ought to be in school.

But those who are taught to relinquish a system in which they had been educated,

Be sober, be intelligent, be educated, rely on the tangible reality as long as you can.

Educated: no. Stupid: yes. And when I say “stupid,” I mean stupid fresh.