A miracle entails a degree of irrationality—not because it shocks reason, but because it makes no appeal to it.

Superstitions are habits rather than beliefs.

The believer in magic and miracles reflects on how to impose a law on nature—and, in brief, the religious cult is the outcome of this reflection.

The Mughal’s nature is such that they demand miracles, but if a miracle were to be performed by some upright follower of our religion, they would say that it had been brought about by magic and sorcery. They would strike him down with spears or would stone him to death.

One thing alone not even God can do: to make undone whatever has been done.

Nothing worth knowing can be understood with the mind.

Nothing is so easy to fake as the inner vision.

Nothing from nothing ever yet was born.

The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science.

The more enlightened our houses are, the more their walls ooze ghosts.

There is nothing that man fears more than the touch of the unknown. He wants to see what is reaching toward him and to be able to recognize or at least classify it. Man always tends to avoid physical contact with anything strange.

In the past, men created witches; now they create mental patients.

Many are the wonders of the world, and none so wonderful as man.