In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.

To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going on one's knees and thanking Him.

Are ye come out as against a thief with swords and staves for to take me? I sat daily with you teaching in the temple, and ye laid no hold on me. But all this was done, that the scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled. 26:55-56 (KJV)

He was... 40 years old before he looked upon geometry; which happened accidentally. Being in a gentleman's library..., Euclid's Elements lay open, and 'twas the 47 El. libri I. He read the proposition. 'By G-,' sayd he (he would now and then sweare, by way of emphasis), 'this is impossible!' So he reads the demonstration of it, which referred him back to such a proposition, which proposition he read. That referred him back to another, which he also read. Et sic deinceps, that at last was demonstrably convinced of the truth. This made him in love with geometry. John Aubrey, A Brief Life of Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1679 (1898) as quoted by Stephen J. Finn, Thomas Hobbes and the Politics of Natural Philosophy

Follow the seasons of Ha,Ride in the state carriage of Yau,Wear the ceremonial cap of Chan,Let the music be the Shiu with its pantomimes.

The foundations on which several duties are built, and the foundations of right and wrong from which they spring, are not perhaps easily to be let into the minds of grown men, not us'd to abstract their thoughts from common received opinions. Much less are children capable of reasonings from remote principles. They cannot conceive the force of long deductions. The reasons that move them must be obvious, and level to their thoughts, and such as may be felt and touched. But yet, if their age, temper, and inclination be consider'd, they will never want such motives as may be sufficient to convince them.

For many years I was self-appointed inspector of snowstorms and rainstorms, and did my duty faithfully, though I never received one cent for it.

Those of our pleasures which come most rarely give the greatest delight.

The whole mystery of commodities, all the magic and necromancy that surrounds the products of labor as long as they take the form of commodities, vanishes therefore, so soon as we come to other forms of production.

Be gentle with them, Timothy. They want to be free, but they don't know how. Teach them. Reassure them.

What of a truth that is bounded by these mountains and is falsehood to the world that lives beyond?

'[S]cientific knowledge' always remained sheer guesswork... controlled by criticism and experiment. ...[T]his assumption is sufficient for solving the problem of induction-called by Kant 'the problem of Hume'- without sacrificing empiricism...[i.e.,] without adopting a principle of induction and ascribing to it a priori validity. For guesses are not 'induced from observations' (although they may ...be suggested ...by observations). This ... allows us to accept ...(...without Russell's limits of empiricism) Hume's logical criticism of induction and to give up ...an inductive logic, for certainty, and even for probability, while continuing ...scientific search for truth.

I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion.

It was a purely Christian satisfaction to me that if ordinarily there was no one else there was one who in action tried a little to do the doctrine about loving the neighbor, alas, one who precisely by his act also received a frightful into what an illusion Christendom is and indeed, particularly later, also into how the common people let themselves be seduced by wretched journalists, whose striving and fighting for equality can only lead, if it leads to anything, since it is in the service of the lie, to making the elite, in self-defense, proud of their aloofness from the common man, and the common man brazen in his rudeness.

Hath God obliged himself not to exceed the bounds of our knowledge?

We have two bits of evidence about the Somebody. One is the universe He has made. If we used that as our only clue, I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place.) ...The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put in our minds. And this is a better bit of evidence than the other, because it is inside information. You find out more about God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built.

Newspapers are the second hand of history. This hand, however, is usually not only of inferior metal to the other hands, it also seldom works properly.

We face eternity now. We have no universe left, no outside phenomena, no emotions, no passions. Nothing but ourselves and thought. We face an eternity of introspection, when all through history we have never known what to do with ourselves on a rainy Sunday.

Do not wonder, if the common people speak more truly than those of high rank; for they speak with more safety.

Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.

Liberty therefore not being more fit than other words in some of the instances in which it has been used, and not so fit in others, the less the use that is made of it the better. I would no more use the word liberty in my conversation when I could get another that would answer the purpose, than I would brandy in my diet, if my physician did not order me: both cloud the understanding and inflame the passions.

For what is it that everyone is seeking? To live securely, to be happy, to do everything as they wish to do, not to be hindered, not to be subject to compulsion.

In a word, neither death, nor exile, nor pain, nor anything of this kind is the real cause of our doing or not doing any action, but our inward opinions and principles.

Whenever a theory appears to you as the only possible one, take this as a sign that you have neither understood the theory nor the problem which it was intended to solve.

Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.

I say a murder is abstract. You pull the trigger and after that you do not understand anything that happens.

Remember that time slurs over everything, let all deeds fade, blurs all writings and kills all memories. Except are only those which dig into the hearts of men by love.

The method of not erring is sought by all the world. The logicians profess to guide it, the geometricians alone attain it, and apart from science, and the imitations of it, there are no true demonstrations.

Trantor could win even such a war, but perhaps not without paying a price that would make victory only a pleasanter name for defeat.

Greater fates gain greater rewards.

At best the principles that economists have supposed the choices of rational individuals to satisfy can be presented as guidelines for us to consider when we make our decisions.

Here I stand; I can do no otherwise. God help me. Amen!

Things have their root and their branches. Affairs have their end and their beginning. To know what is first and what is last will lead near to what is taught in the Great Learning.

Government by majorities can be made less oppressive by devolution, by placing the decision of questions primarily affecting only a section of the community in the hands of that section, rather than of a Central Chamber. In this way, men are no longer forced to submit to decisions made in a hurry by people mostly ignorant of the matter in hand and not personally interested.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

Music is an ocean, but the repertory is hardly even a lake; it is a pond.

When two, or more men, know of one and the same fact, they are said to be CONSCIOUS of it one to another; which is as much as to know it together.

The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.

The way of the world is to make laws, but follow custom.

There will always be some people who think for themselves, even among the self-appointed guardians of the great mass who, after having thrown off the yoke of immaturity themselves, will spread about them the spirit of a reasonable estimate of their own value and of the need for every man to think for himself.

There is an inconvenience which attends all abstruse reasoning. That it may silence, without convincing an antagonist, and requires the same intense study to make us sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and 'tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attain'd with difficulty.

Freedom is only necessity understood.

By faithfulness we are collected and wound up into unity within ourselves, whereas we had been scattered abroad in multiplicity.

It seems to me certain that more people are killed out of righteous stupidity than out of wickedness.

Now in all of us, however constituted, but to a degree the greater in proportion as we are intense and sensitive and subject to diversified temptations, and to the greatest possible degree if we are decidedly psychopathic, does the normal evolution of character chiefly consist in the straightening out and unifying of the inner self. The higher and the lower feelings, the useful and the erring impulses, begin by being a comparative chaos within us - they must end by forming a stable system of functions in right subordination. Unhappiness is apt to characterize the period of order-making and struggle.

The sense of justice and injustice is not deriv'd from nature, but arises artificially... from education, and human conventions.

It is generally admitted that most grown-up people, however regrettably, will try to have a good time.

Truth, like light, blinds. Falsehood, on the contrary, is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.

The kingdom, its states, and its families, may be perfectly ruled; dignities and emoluments may be declined; naked weapons may be trampled under the feet; but the course of the Mean cannot be attained to.

If a man has no humaneness what can his propriety be like? If a man has no humaneness what can his happiness be like?