“Wandering in a vast forest at night, I have only a faint light to guide me. A stranger appears and says to me: ‘My friend, you should blow out your candle in order to find your way more clearly.’ This stranger is a theologian.”

I discuss with myself questions of politics, love, taste, or philosophy. I let my mind rove wantonly, give it free rein to followany idea, wise or mad that may present itself. My ideas are my harlots.

When one compares the talents one has with those of a Leibniz , one is tempted to throw away one’s books and go die quietly in the dark of some forgotten corner.

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

In general, children, like men, and men, like children, prefer entertainment to education.

To describe women, the pen should be dipped in the humid colors of the rainbow, and the paper dried with the dust gathered from the wings of a butterfly.

Although a man may wear fine clothing, if he lives peacefully; and is good, self-possessed, has faith and is pure; and if he does not hurt any living being, he is a holy man.

Only a very bad theologian would confuse the certainty that follows revelation with the truths that are revealed. They are entirely different things.

If you want me to believe in God, you must make me touch him.

All abstract sciences are nothing but the study of relations between signs.

No man has received from nature the right to give orders to others. Freedom is a gift from heaven, and every individual of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in enjoyment of his reason.

Evil always turns up in this world through some genius or other.

Morals are in all countries the result of legislation and government; they are not African or Asian or European: they are good or bad.

One may demand of me that I should seek truth, but not that I should find it.

Every man has his dignity. I’m willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.

Patriotism is an ephemeral motive that scarcely ever outlasts the particular threat to society that aroused it.

Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.

In order to choose the right path, we do not have to figure out the wrong one… we just need to follow the light.

If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness-cry and then walk-but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order.

I was born in California, raised a vegetarian, and love science fiction, so don’t tell me how I need to be in order to fit your standards.

Adversity isn’t an obstacle that we need to get around in order to resume living our life. It’s part of our life.

However, the resources at our people’s disposal are very few and we require assistance from the neighboring Arab countries, and for weapons in order to fight the enemy.

Today the search for a new global order is under way.

Whatever has “wit enough to keep it sweet” defies corruption and outlasts all time; but the wit must be of that outward and visible order which needs no introduction or demonstration at our hands.

I am ready to serve the people of Afghanistan, particularly in order to restore peace.