“We may become the makers of our fate when we have ceased to pose as its prophets.”

All life is problem-solving.

In my view, aiming at simplicity and lucidity is a moral duty of all intellectuals: lack of clarity is a sin, and pretentiousness is a crime.

He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test and that they can be regarded as finally verified retires from the game.

The way of science is paved with discarded theories that were once declared self-evident.

The method of learning by trial and error – of learning from our mistakes – seems to be fundamentally the same whether it is practiced by lower or by higher animals, by chimpanzees, or by men of science.

In philosophy methods are unimportant; any method is legitimate if it leads to results capable of being rationally discussed.

In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.

Theology, I still think, is due to a lack of faith.

Science may be described as the art of systematic oversimplification.

The game of science is, in principle, without end.

The essential feature of dualist-interactionism is that the mind and brain are independent entities and that they interact by quantum physics.

“It can’t happen here” is always wrong: a dictatorship can happen anywhere.

A theory that explains everything, explains nothing.

If our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men.

The simple truth is that truth is hard to come by, and that once found may easily be lost again.

The quest for precision is analogous to the quest for certainty, and both should be abandoned.

You don’t really get to choose who you fall in love with. Love chooses you.

The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the state is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism.

We’ve got no fairytale ending, in God’s hands our fate is complete. Your heaven’s here in my heart, our love’s this dust beneath my feet.

Tis writ on Paradise’s gate, Woe to the dupe that yields to fate!

I can never forget that one of the most gifted, best educated nations in the world, of its own free will, surrendered its fate into the hands of a maniac.

Kisses are a better fate than wisdom.

By Fate full many a heart has been undone, And many a sprightly rose made woe-begone; Plume thee not on thy lusty youth and strength: Full many a bud is blasted ere its bloom.

He who has calmly reconciled his life to fate … can look fortune in the face.