Quotes
"He who has a why can bear with almost any how. Man does not seek happiness, only the Englishman does."
"[Economics] finds the secret of this universe in 'supply and demand,' and reduces the duty of human governors to that of letting men alone," and so "a dreary, desolate and, indeed, quite abject and distressing" science; "what we might call, by way of eminence, the dismal science." When such sciences are called "dismal" in this way, the point is not usually to claim that the results of such an investigation make us gloomy or depressed. The point is broader: that such an assessment of human conduct and of value itself already reflects a somewhat low-minded orientation, even a skeptical reduction of noneconomic value to market or exchange value."
"All progress depends on the unreasonable man."
"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
"Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you."
"Action produces information. If you're unsure of what to do, just do anything, even if it's the wrong thing. This will give you information about what you should actually be doing."
"What good amid these, O me, O life? Answer. That you are here—that life exists and identity, that the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."
"Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face."
"I never let my schooling interfere with my education."
"Don't worry about what anybody else is going to do. The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
"The imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man."
"Get the important things right."
"The forms that come and go—and of which your body is but one—are the flashes of my dancing limbs. Know Me in all, and of what shall you be afraid?"
"To make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe."
"Give me a lever and a place to stand on, and I will move the Earth."
"In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded."
"A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention."
"Wherever you go, there you are."
"All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind."