Echoes

Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true. We have a method, and that method helps us to reach not absolute truth, only asymptotic approaches to the truth — never there, just closer and closer, always finding vast new oceans of undiscovered possibilities. Cleverly designed experiments are the key.

Truth is the daughter of time, not of authority.

Truth will ultimately prevail where there is pains to bring it to light.

The hidden harmony is better than the obvious.

He who knows all the answers has not been asked all the questions.

I know that I know nothing.

We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth.

Man knows much more than he understands.

The Tao is like a bellows: it is empty yet infinitely capable. The more you use it, the more it produces; the more you talk of it, the less you understand.

The world will hardly admit of an excuse for a man leaving a coast unexplored he has once discovered.

Everything in the universe is within you. Ask all from yourself.

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

They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.

I would prefer inarticulate wisdom to loquacious foolishness.

The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.

Last of all he will be able to see the sun, not turning aside to the illusory reflections of it in the water, but gazing directly at it in its own proper place and contemplating it as it is.

Learn about pines from the pine, and about bamboo from the bamboo.

The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnameable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations. Yet mystery and manifestations arise from the same source. This source is called darkness. Darkness within darkness. The gateway to all understanding.

Therefore, this terror of the mind and the darkness must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun or the bright light of day, but by the appearance and reasoning of nature.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise; seek what they sought.

One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.

In every systematic inquiry where there are first principles, or causes, or elements, knowledge and science result from acquiring knowledge of these.

Not-knowing is true knowledge. Presuming to know is a disease.