Echoes

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.

Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others.

If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people.

A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies, becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest form of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal in satisfying his vices. And it all comes from lying — to others and to yourself.

It is not truth that makes man great, but man that makes truth great.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

Nature never did betray the heart that loved her.

Men are at variance with the one thing with which they are in the most unbroken communion, the reason that administers the whole universe.

The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man.

It is just as foolish to complain that people are selfish and treacherous as it is to complain that the magnetic field does not increase unless the electric field has a curl. Both are laws of nature.

Nothing we see or hear is perfect. But right there in the imperfection is perfect reality.

Exactitude is not truth.

Nature of the world was not created for us by divine will: such great fault is inherent in it.

It is far from easy to determine whether Nature has proved to man a kind parent or a merciless stepmother.

Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.

Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth.

The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and by examining ourselves—without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster. We cannot begin with an entirely clean slate, since we arrive at this problem with predispositions of hereditary and environmental origin; but, after understanding such built-in biases, is it not possible to pry insights from nature?

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

To different minds, the same world is a hell, and a heaven.

If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.

Nature everywhere speaks to man in a voice familiar to his soul.

Everything in excess is opposed to nature.

I know that I know nothing.