“Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses nature leads, or you shall learn nothing. I have only begun ...”

“The scientific spirit is of more value than its products, and irrationally held truths may be more harmful than reasoned errors.”

“What we call rational grounds for our beliefs are often extremely irrational attempts to justify our instincts.”

“With theology as a code of dogmas which are to be believed, or at any rate repeated, under penalty of present or future punishment, or as a storehouse of anaesthetics for those who find the pains o...”

“Wherever sufficiently numerous series of the remains of any given group, which has endured for a long space of time, are carefully examined, their morphological relations are never in discordance w...”

“I am too much of a skeptic to deny the possibility of anything.”

“In fact a favourite problem of [John Tyndall] isGiven the molecular forces in a mutton chop, deduce Hamlet or Faust therefrom. He is confident that the Physics of the Future will solve this easily.”

“Grant me one hour on loves most sacred shoresTo clasp the bosom that my soul adores,Lie heart to heart and merge my soul with yours.”

“... the vintage of history is forever repeating ~ same old vines, same old wines!”

“I'm choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I'm making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.”

“Future warns us through current symptoms in nature.”

“Human relationships always help us to carry on because they always presuppose further developments, a future - and also because we live as if our only task was precisely to have relationships with ...”

“You can't just skip the boring parts.""Of course I can skip the boring parts.""How do you know they're boring if you don't read them?""I can tell.""Then you can't say you've read the whole play.""I...”

“GUIL: It [Hamlet's madness] really boils down to symptoms. Pregnant replies, mystic allusions, mistaken identities, arguing his father is his mother, that sort of thing; intimations of suicide, for...”

“Pretend to be mad and talk a lot. Then and this is the important bit do nothing at all until you absolutely have to and then make sure everyone dies.”