Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the self-same well from which your laughter rises was often-times filled with your tears.

We do not describe the world we see, we see the world we can describe.

Whenever anyone has offended me, I try to raise my soul so high that the offense cannot reach it.

De omnibus dubitandum

Divide each difficulty into as many parts as is feasible and necessary to resolve it.

Conquer yourself rather than the world.

The reading of all good books is like a conversation with the finest minds of past centuries.

The chief cause of human errors is to be found in the prejudices picked up in childhood.

Doubt is the origin of wisdom

The only thing we have power over in the universe is our own thoughts.

How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?

Scotland needs comedy more than ever. With the independence debate, finally after 300 years, reaching room temperature.

I asked people who have already finished books for advice, which is akin to asking a mother with a four-year-old what childbirth is like.

I've got personal views on the '60s. You can't have freedom without paying the price for it.

What is flirtatiousness but an argument that life must go on and on and on?

It is as absurd to expect members of philosophy departments to be philosophers as it is to expect members of art departments to be artists.

Dreaming carries no risks. The dangerous thing is trying to transform your dreams into reality.

Whenever someone wonders how I could have written 57 books, I remind them that Isaac Asimov wrote 500 books.

The problem for a Paracelsian physician like me is that I see diseases as disguises in which people present me with their wretchedness.

I come to YOU without ME, come to ME without YOU.

In the end, the tragedy of Harold Wilson was that you couldn't believe a word he said