It is said that there is nothing firm, nothing balanced, nothing durable in all the universe — that nothing remains in its original state, that each day, each hour, each moment, there is change.

Any school for free citizens must begin by teaching distrust, not trust. It must teach questioning, not acceptance of stock answers.

No person can ever know everything that is in the heart of another. We are all Face Dancers in our souls.

Let pressure pass over and through you. That way you can’t be harmed by it.

There is no reality — only our own order imposed on everything.

In adverse circumstances, every creature becomes something else, evolving or devolving. What makes us human is that we know what we once were, and, let us hope, we remember how to change back.

Written words, if carefully laid down, represent the civilized ideal of reason.

As mortal humans we are born with a death sentence anyway, so what difference does a little poison make? Why not take a chance you will survive the ordeal and make something significant of your...

The capacity to learn is a gift; The ability to learn is a skill; The willingness to learn is a choice.

The Universe operates on a basic principle of economics: everything has its cost. We pay to create our future, we pay for the mistakes of the past. We pay for every change we make ....

The universe is our picture. Only the immature imagine the cosmos to be what they think it is.

Simplicity is the most difficult of all concepts.

Discovery is dangerous . . . but so is life. A man unwilling to take risk is doomed never to learn, never to grow, never to live.

But the Butlerians turn fear into violence and panic into a weapon. By creating imaginary problems and raising the specter of nonexistent enemies, they transform common people into a wild herd that destroys everything they...

We create our own future by our own beliefs, which control our actions. A strong enough belief system, a sufficiently powerful conviction, can make anything happen. This is how we create our consensus reality, including...

No one has yet determined the power of the human species . . . what it may perform by instinct, and what it may accomplish with rational determination.

If you surrender, you have already lost. If you refuse to give up, though, no matter the odds against you, at least you have succeeded in trying.

It’s so much more interesting to study a … damaged world. I find it difficult to learn anything in a place that’s too civilized.