“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

“Nothing ever goes away until it has taught us what we need to know.”

“The painful experience of many gamblers has taught us the lesson that no system of betting is successful in improving the gambler's chances. If the theory of probability is true to life, this experience must correspond to a provable statement.”

“What an astounding thing is the voice! By what miracle is the hot magma of the earth transformed into that which we call speech? If out of clay such an abstract medium as words can be shaped what is to hinder us from leaving our bodies at will and taking up our abode on other planets or between the planets? What is to prevent us from rearranging all life, atomic, molecular, corporeal, stellar, diving? Who or what is powerful enough to eradicate this miraculous leaven which we bear within us like a seed and which, after we have embraced in our mind all the universe, is nothing more than a seed — since to say universe is as easy as to say seed, and we have yet to say greater things, things beyond saying, things limitless and inconceivable, things which no trick of language can encompass.”

“Quantum theory can be described as a new kind of language to be used in a dialogue between us and the systems we study with our instruments. …It tells us nothing about what the world would be like in our absence.”

“No one can possess what we call good judgement, which is about the same thing as an instinct for recognizing Reasonable Probabilities, whose mind is not trained to follow truth. And in many of the most important things of life. Reasonable Probabilities are our only guides.”

“To define what we are is to reduce and distort what we are: to say that we are nothing but our desires or nothing but our self-interest is to misrepresent us.”

“What we call Life is a condition of the soul. And the soul must improve in happiness and wisdom, except by its own fault. These tears in our eyes, these faintings of the flesh, will not hinder such improvement.”

“Our life would be what we made of it--nothing more, nothing less.”

“What we have in life that we can count on is who we are and where we come from… For better or worse, that is what we have to sustain us in our endeavors, to buttress us in our darker moments, and to remind us of our identity. Without those things, we are adrift.”