The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greatest part of skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.

Most men do not feel in themselves the competence required for leading their group to victory, and therefore seek out a captain who appears to possess the courage and sagacity necessary for the achievement of supremacy. Even in religion this impulse appears. Nietzsche accused Christianity of inculcating a slave-morality, but ultimate triumph was always the goal. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

The real nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, all that was not present did not exist.

If good music has charms to soothe the savage breast, bad music has no less powerful spells for filling the mildest breast with rage, the happiest with horror and disgust. Oh, those mammy songs, those love longings, those loud hilarities! How was it possible that human emotions intrinsically decent could be so ignobly parodied.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

Unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more. 12:48

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. 

You must read Plato. But you must hold him at arm's length and say, 'Plato, you have delighted and edified mankind for two thousand years. What have you to say to me?'

Of all the books I have ever worked on, I think Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare gave me the most pleasure, day in, day out. For months and months I lived and thought Shakespeare, and I don't see how there can be any greater pleasure in the world, any pleasure, that is, that one can indulge in for as much as ten hours without pause, day after day indefinitely.

Have no fear, little flock, for your Father has approved of giving you the Kingdom. 12:32

Everyone is entitled to commit murder in the imagination once in a while, not to mention lesser infractions.

It is worth observing, how we feel ourselves affected in reading the characters of Cæsar, and Cato, as they are so finely drawn and contrasted in Salust. In one, the ignoscendo, largiundo; in the other, nil largiundo. In one, the miseris perfugium; in the other, malis perniciem. In the latter we have much to admire, much to reverence, and perhaps something to fear; we respect him, but we respect him at a distance. The former makes us familiar with him; we love him, and he leads us whither he pleases.

Our youth we can have but to-day, We may always find time to grow old. Can Love be controlled by Advice?

One can say that the author is an ideological product, since we represent him as the opposite of his historically real function. (When a historically given function is represented in a figure that inverts it, one has an ideological production.) The author is therefore the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning.

For on these matters we should not trust the multitude who say that none ought to be educated but the free, but rather to philosophers, who say that the educated alone are free. Variant: ...Only the educated are free.

Competition for power is of two sorts: between organizations, and between individuals for leadership within an organization.

I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along.

It is clear that the causal nexus is not a nexus at all.

You shall have joy, or you shall have power, said God; you shall not have both.

Wind indeed increases fire, but custom love.

Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.

I pray you, magnificent Sir, do not trouble yourself to return to us, but await our coming to you.

Not frequently man from man.

The best effect of fine persons is felt after we have left their presence.

Earth governments in moments of stress are not famous for being reasonable.

We must frankly confess, then, using our empirical common sense and ordinary practical prejudices, that in the world that actually is, the virtues of sympathy, charity, and non-resistance may be, and often have been, manifested in excess. ... You will agree to this in general, for in spite of the Gospel, in spite of Quakerism, in spite of Tolstoi, you believe in fighting fire with fire, in shooting down usurpers, locking up thieves, and freezing out vagabonds and swindlers.

At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice, and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.

Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate, for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain without being uncovered. 

Outside of that single fatality of death, everything, joy or happiness, is liberty.

An optimistic view of the future would indicate that before long, the clear necessity of expanding humanity's horizons would cause ... space settlements to be built. The construction would also serve as a great project that not only would be clearly of great benefit, but might induce human cooperation in something large enough to fire the heart and mind, and make people forget the petty quarrels that have engaged them for thousands of years in wars over insignificant scraps of earthly territory.

Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer.

Order thyself so, that thy Soul may always be in good estate; whatsoever become of thy body.

All that is under heaven, says the sage, runs one law and one fortune.

Never any good came out of female domination. God created Adam master and lord of living creatures, but Eve spoiled it all.

It costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men.

Not till then did his controllers allow him to suspect that death itself might not after all cure the illusion of being a soul-nay, might prove the entry into a world where that illusion raged infinite and unchecked. Escape for the soul, if not for the body, was offered him. He became able to know (and simultaneously refused the knowledge) that he had been wrong from the beginning, that souls and personal responsibility existed. He half saw: he wholly hated. The physical torture of the burning was not fiercer than his hatred of that.

It built itself up endlessly, like a chess game, and the telemetrists began to use a computer to program the computer that designed the program for the computer that programmed the robot-controlling computer.

A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity.

God said, I am tired of kings, I suffer them no more; Up to my ear the morning brings The outrage of the poor.

The state of society is one in which the members have suffered amputation from the trunk, and strut about so many walking monsters,-a good finger, a neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a man.

Writing does not cause misery. It is born of misery.

You must not murder. (Exodus 20:13) Q. What does this mean? A. We should fear and love God so that we may not hurt or harm our neighbor in his body, but help and befriend him in every bodily need [in every need and danger of life and body.

The real point at issue always is Turkey in Europe - the great peninsula to the south of the Save and Danube. This splendid territory [the Balkans] has the misfortune to be inhabited by a conglomerate of different races and nationalities, of which it is hard to say which is the least fit for progress and civilization. Slavonians, Greeks, Wallachians, Arnauts, twelve millions of men, are all held in submission by one million of Turks, and up to a recent period, it appeared doubtful whether, of all these different races, the Turks were not the most competent to hold the supremacy which, in such a mixed population, could not but accrue to one of these nationalities.

A law there is, an oracle of Doom, Of old enacted by the assembled gods, That if a Daemon-such as live for ages- Defile himself with foul and sinful murder, He must for seasons thrice ten thousand roam Far from the Blest; such is the path I tread, I too a wanderer and exile from heaven.

It requires twenty years for a man to rise from the vegetable state in which he is within his mother's womb, and from the pure animal state which is the lot of his early childhood, to the state when the maturity of reason begins to appear. It has required thirty centuries to learn a little about his structure. It would need eternity to learn something about his soul. It takes an instant to kill him.

Nature paints the best part of a picture, carves the best parts of the statue, builds the best part of the house, and speaks the best part of the oration.

This inner revolution is realistic because it maintains itself deliberately within the framework of existing institutions; the oppressed reckon with the real situation.

Monsters cannot be announced. One cannot say: 'here are our monsters', without immediately turning the monsters into pets.