“Nothing is more important than to see the sources of invention which are, in my opinion more interesting than the inventions themselves.”

Men act like brutes in so far as the sequences of their perceptions arise through the principle of memory only, like those empirical physicians who have mere practice without theory.

A distinction must be made between true and false ideas, and that too much rein must not be given to a man’s imagination under pretext of its being a clear and distinct intellection.

Natural religion itself, seems to decay very much. Many will have human souls to be material: others make God himself a corporeal being.

It is unworthy of excellent men to lose hours like slaves in the labor of calculation which could be relegated to anyone else if machines were used.

The present is great with the future.

I also readily admit that there are animals, taken in the ordinary sense, that are incomparably larger than those we know of, and I have sometimes said in jest that there might be a system like ours which is the pocketwatch of some enormous giant.

It’s easier to be original and foolish than original and wise.

If you have a clear idea of a soul, you will have a clear idea of a form; for it is of the same genus, though a different species.

There are also two kinds of truths: truth of reasoning and truths of fact.

..This is why the ultimate reason of things must lie in a necessary substance, in which the differentiation of the changes only exists eminently as in their source; and this is what we call God.

Take what you need, do what you should, you will get what you want.

To love is to find pleasure in the happiness of others.

The art of discovering the causes of phenomena, or true hypotheses, is like the art of deciphering, in which an ingenious conjecture often greatly shortens the road.

There never is absolute birth nor complete death, in the strict sense, consisting in the separation of the soul from the body. What we call births are developments and growths, while what we call deaths are envelopments and diminutions.

The past is pregnant with the present.

Everything that is possible demands to exist.

America is a country of inventors, and the greatest of inventors are the newspaper men.

Television is like the invention of indoor plumbing. It didn’t change people’s habits. It just kept them inside the house.

Hell must be a pretty swell spot, because the guys that invented religion have sure been trying hard to keep everybody else out.

It is no longer a question anywhere of inventing interconnections from out of our brains, but of discovering them in the facts.

A truth that’s told with bad intent beats all the lies you can invent.

The serve was invented so that the net could play.

Fathers never have exactly the daughters they want because they invent a notion a them that the daughters have to conform to.

Conscience is a Jewish invention.