What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.

If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing.

It is truer to say that martyrs create faith more than faith creates martyrs.

A man does not die of love or his liver or even of old age; he dies of being a man.

Only in solitude do we find ourselves; and in finding ourselves, we find in ourselves all our brothers in solitude.

Science is a cemetery of dead ideas.

What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.

We need God, not in order to understand the why, but in order to feel and sustain the ultimate wherefore, to give a meaning to the universe.

To love with the spirit is to pity, and he who pities most loves most.

It is sad not to love, but it is much sadder not to be able to love.

Suffering is the substance of life and the root of personality, for it is only suffering that makes us persons.

If it is nothingness that awaits us, let us make an injustice of it; let us fight against destiny, even though without hope of victory.

Art distills sensations and embodies it with enhanced meaning.

True science teaches, above all, to doubt and to be ignorant.

A lot of good arguments are spoiled by some fool who knows what he is talking about.

Life is doubt, and faith without doubt is nothing but death.

Your neighbor's vision is as true for him as your own vision is true for you.

The skeptic does not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found.

The only way to give finality to the world is to give it consciousness.

That which the Fascists hate above all else, is intelligence.

The greatest height of heroism to which an individual, like a people, can attain is to know how to face ridicule.

There is no true love save in suffering, and in this world we have to choose either love, which is suffering, or happiness. Man is the more man - that is, the more divine - the greater his capacity for suffering, or rather, for anguish.

To fall into a habit is to begin to cease to be.

Faith which does not doubt is dead faith.

Consciousness is a disease.

Some people will believe anything if you whisper it to them.

Anyone who in discussion relies upon authority uses, not his understanding, but rather his memory.

Human beliefs, like all other natural growths, elude the barrier of systems.

Cure yourself of the affliction of caring how you appear to others. Concern yourself only with how you appear before God, concern yourself only with the idea that God may have of you.

We never know, believe me, when we have succeeded best.

Love is the child of illusion and the parent of disillusion.

Man dies of cold, not of darkness.

Cure yourself of the affliction of caring how you appear to others. Concern yourself only with how you appear before God Concern yourself only with the idea that God may have of you

Chemistry ought to be not for chemists alone.

Man dies of cold not of darkness.

The pessimism that protests and defends itself cannot be truly said to be pessimism.

The satisfied, the happy, do not live; they fall asleep in habit, near neighbor to annihilation.

Science is a cemetery of dead ideas

The skeptic dows not mean him who doubts, but him who investigates or researches, as opposed to him who asserts and thinks that he has found.

Sometimes, his methods and his motives are questionable and even his morals are questionable in the way he does things. But I think his intention is always to protect his daughter.

There is no music that can't be used politically, but the motives behind the creation of that music can be non-political.

Those who joined us for selfish personal reasons, for a career or other motives will be the ones to leave.

My actions to promote peace, the mediation missions which I carried out during many conflicts, which very often occurred between brothers of the same country, are not driven by any ulterior motives or any calculations based on personal ambitions.

Our souls may lose their peace and even disturb other people's, if we are always criticizing trivial actions - which often are not real defects at all, but we construe them wrongly through our ignorance of their motives.

In 1930s mysteries, all sorts of motives were credible which aren't credible today, especially motives of preventing guilty sexual secrets from coming out. Nowadays, people sell their guilty sexual secrets.

It must inquire not merely about the circumstances of the time in general, but in particular about the writer's position with regard to these things, the interests and motives, the leading ideas of his literary activity.

People have motives and thoughts of which they are unaware.

I am convinced that the majority of people would be generous from selfish motives, if they had the opportunity.

Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.