“In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.”

There is less harm to be suffered in being mad among madmen than in being sane all by oneself.

Doctors are always working to preserve our health and cooks to destroy it, but the latter are the more often successful.

The wisest among us is very lucky never to have met the woman, be she beautiful or ugly, intelligent or stupid, who could drive him crazy enough to be fit to be put into an asylum.

My ideas are my whores.

There is only one passion, the passion for happiness.

Which is the greater merit, to enlighten the human race, which remains forever, or to save one’s fatherland, which is perishable?

Passions destroy more prejudices than philosophy does.

The infant runs toward it with its eyes closed, the adult is stationary, the old man approaches it with his back turned.

First of all move me, surprise me, rend my heart; make me tremble, weep, shudder; outrage me; delight my eyes afterwards if you can.

Scepticism is the first step towards truth.

What a fine comedy this world would be if one did not play a part in it.

There are things I can’t force. I must adjust. There are times when the greatest change needed is a change of my viewpoint.

Shakespeare’s fault is not the greatest into which a poet may fall. It merely indicates a deficiency of taste.

The best doctor is the one you run to and can’t find.

The world is the house of the strong.

Superstition is more injurious to God than atheism.

While hitting one must guard … In order to hit with effect, the enemy must be taken off his guard.

There is no executive order; there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community. This we must do as individuals and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision.

In order to live off a garden, you practically have to live in it.

Reasonable orders are easy enough to obey; it is capricious, bureaucratic or plain idiotic demands that form the habit of discipline.

I need someone to protect me from all the measures they take in order to protect me.

The first requisite for a better social order is the return to unrestricted freedom of thought and speech.

Small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos can shift the whole system to a higher order.

Compassion opposes this order and is therefore best thought of as being in some way supernatural.