Fundamental Truths Quotes

I think it's important to reason from first principles rather than by analogy. The normal way we conduct our lives is we reason by analogy. [With analogy] we are doing this because it's like something else that was done, or it is like what other people are doing. [With first principles] you boil things down to the most fundamental truths…and then reason up from there.

The basic laws of the universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can’t grasp them. There is a pattern in creation.

Physics is a good framework for thinking. ... Boil things down to their fundamental truths and reason up from there.

Don’t just follow the trend. You may have heard me say that it’s good to think in terms of the physics approach of first principles. Which is, rather than reasoning by analogy, you boil things down to the most fundamental truths you can imagine and you reason up from there.

Simple truths are a relief from grand speculations.

The rules of the universe that we think we know are buried deep in our processes of perception.

Never compromise a principle or relinquish a vital truth.

Principles are the simplicity on the far side of complexity.

Human rights are an aspect of natural law, a consequence of the way the universe works, as solid and as real as photons or the concept of pi. The idea of self- ownership is the equivalent of Pythagoras' theorem, of evolution by natural selection, of general relativity, and of quantum theory. Before humankind discovered any of these, it suffered, to varying degrees, in misery and ignorance.

Men and times change-but principles-never.

..and certain that life consisted of a few simple signals and decisions; that death took root at the moment of birth and man’s only recourse thereafter was to water and tend it; that propagation was a fiction; consequently, society was a fiction too; that fathers and teachers, by virtue of being fathers and teachers, were guilty of a grievous sin.

Yes, we know more than ever before, and it's a wonder that we get to inhabit a world full of driverless cars and 3D printers. But that doesn't mean that we know any more about the essential things in life - love, faith, death - and it would be dangerous to assume we did. The only thing that gets us through sometimes is a proper, humbled sense that we don't have a clue, we can't be sure what's going to happen next and life will always be much larger than our ideas of it.

We are of different opinions at different hours, but we always may be said to be at heart on the side of truth.

I've always wanted to find the rules that govern everything. It's amazing that such rules exist. It's even more amazing that we can find them.

The manner in which things exist and take place, constitutes what is called the nature of things; and a careful observation of the nature of things is the sole foundation of all truth.

The most important things to say are those which often I did not think necessary for me to say - because they were too obvious.

I study much, and the more I study, the oftener I go back to those first principles which are so simple that childhood itself can lisp them.

God designed the world in such a way that everything functions on principles. Principles are eternal laws established and inherent in creation that make creation function.

Principles are concepts that can be applied over and over again in similar circumstances as distinct from narrow answers to specific questions. Every game has principles that successful players master to achieve winning results. So does life. Principles are ways of successfully dealing with the laws of nature or the laws of life. Those who understand more of them and understand them well know how to interact with the world more effectively than those who know fewer of them or know them less well.

We try more to profit from always remembering the obvious than from grasping the esoteric.

Basic facts tend always to be those most easily overlooked.

There's nothing in this world like being the first to discover some fundamental fact of nature. It's profoundly satisfying.

If they be principles evident of themselves, they need nothing to evidence them.

In disquisitions of every kind there are certain primary truths, or first principles, upon which all subsequent reasoning must depend.

Wisdom is not just knowing fundamental truths, if these are unconnected with the guidance of life or with a perspective on its meaning. If the deep truths physicists describe about the origin and functioning of the universe have little practical import and do not change our picture of the meaning of the universe and our place within it, then knowing them would not count as wisdom.