Quotes to inspire and reflect

The invariable mark of wisdom is to see the miraculous in the common.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

I know what I have given you. I do not know what you have received.

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.

God does not play dice.

In examinations, the foolish ask questions the wise cannot answer.

The more success the quantum theory has, the sillier it looks.

It is my task to convince you not to turn away because you don't understand it. You see my physics students don't understand it... That is because I don't understand it. Nobody does.

Photons have mass? I didn’t even know they were Catholic.

Nothing happens until something moves.

Nothing is accidental in the universe -- this is one of my Laws of Physics -- except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity.

If anybody says he can think about quantum physics without getting giddy, that only shows he has not understood the first thing about them.

Politics is far more complicated than physics.

Relativity applies to physics, not ethics.

The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

Now he has departed from this strange world a little ahead of me. That means nothing. People like us, who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.

Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.

It's not a matter of what is true that counts but a matter of what is perceived to be true.

I'm not smart enough to lie.

A half-truth is the worst of all lies, because it can be defended in partiality.

The liar's punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else.

Lying is done with words and also with silence.

The most common lie is that which one lies to himself; lying to others is relatively an exception.

When my information changes, I alter my conclusions. What do you do, sir?

By doubting we come at truth.

Philosophy is the science which considers truth.

Fraud and falsehood only dread examination. Truth invites it.

Truth has nothing to do with the number of people it convinces.

The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.

The best ammunition against lies is the truth, there is no ammunition against gossip. It is like a fog and the clear wind blows it away and the sun burns it off.

How much truth can a spirit bear, how much truth can a spirit dare? ... that became for me more and more the real measure of value.

It is in our idleness, in our dreams, that the submerged truth sometimes comes to the top.

It is not because the truth is too difficult to see that we make mistakes... we make mistakes because the easiest and most comfortable course for us is to seek insight where it accords with our emotions - especially selfish ones.

Truth, and goodness, and beauty, are but different faces of the same All.

Those who know the truth are not equal to those who love it.

All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.

The pursuit of truth and beauty is a sphere of activity in which we are permitted to remain children all our lives.

Truth alone wounds.

Every truth passes through three stages before it is recognized. In the first it is ridiculed, in the second it is opposed, in the third it is regarded as self-evident.

Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing wrong with this, except that it ain't so.

Of life's two chief prizes, beauty and truth, I found the first in a loving heart and the second in a labourer’s hand.

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgement of the intellect is only part of the truth.

He that takes truth for his guide, and duty for his end, may safely trust to God's providence to lead him alright.

The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you.

Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, uless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

A lie stands on one leg, truth on two.

I think a man's duty is to find out where the truth is, or if he cannot, at least to take the best possible human doctrine and the hardest to disprove, and to ride on this like a raft over the waters of life.

Truth is often eclipsed but never extinguished.