How much good it would do if one could exterminate the human race.

To act is to anchor in the imminent future.

With regard to the rather common general distinction between good and bad sex ..., bad sex is generally better than none at all. This should not be controversial: it seems to hold for other important matters, like food, music, literature, and society. In the end, one must choose from among the available alternatives, whether their availability depends on the environment or on one's own constitution. And the alternatives have to be fairly grim before it becomes rational to opt for nothing.

No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is; no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.

One must be something in order to do something.

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

For my own part, not believing in universal selfishness, I have no difficulty in admitting that Communism would even now be practicable among the elite of mankind, and may become so among the rest.

At present we live to impede each other's satisfactions; competition, domestic life, society, what is it all but this? We go somewhere where we are not wanted and where we don't want to go. What else is conventional life? Passivity when we want to be active. So many hours spent every day in passively doing what conventional life tells us, when we would so gladly be at work. And is it a wonder that all individual life is extinguished?

Since Sputnik there is no Nature. Nature is an item contained in a man-made environment of satellites and information.

The disciple must break the glass, or better the mirror, the reflection, his infinite speculation on the master. And start to speak.

If I work incessantly to the last, nature owes me another form of existence when the present one collapses.

The veneration of Mary is inscribed in the very depths of the human heart.

The two parties which divide the State, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made ... Now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities ... Innovation is the salient energy; Conservatism the pause on the last movement.

Every commodity is compelled to chose some other commodity for its equivalent.

Lucid intervals and happy pauses.

We have to construct the figure of a new David, the multitude as champion of asymmetrical combat, immaterial workers who became a new kind of combatants, cosmopolitan bricoleurs of resistance and cooperation.

Catastrophic fatality abruptly switches over into salvation.

We will freedom for freedom's sake, in and through particular circumstances. And in thus willing freedom, we discover that it depends entirely upon the freedom of others and that the freedom of others depends upon our own. Obviously, freedom as the definition of a man does not depend upon others, but as soon as there is a commitment, I am obliged to will the liberty of others at the same time as my own. I cannot make liberty my aim unless I make that of others equally my aim.

Ever from one who comes to-morrow Men wait their good and truth to borrow.

Take your fill when the cask is first opened and when it is nearly spent, but midways be sparing: it is poor saving when you come to the lees.

Newton's law is nothing but the statistics of gravitation, it has no power whatever. Let us get rid of the idea of power from law altogether. Call law tabulation of facts, expression of facts, or what you will; anything rather than suppose that it either explains or compels.

It is in the social sphere, in the realm of politics and economics, that the Will to Order becomes really dangerous.

From all these indignities, such as the very beasts of the field would not endure, you can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free.

One can only become a philosopher, but not be one. As one believes he is a philosopher, he stops being one.

If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.

Either be silent or say something better than silence.

God cries to my heart: "Save me!" God cries to men, to animals, to plants, to matter: "Save me!" Listen to your heart and follow him. Shatter your body and awake: We are all one. Love man because you are he. Love animals and plants because you were they, and now they follow you like faithful co-workers and slaves. Love your body; only with it may you fight on this earth and turn matter into spirit. Love matter. God clings to it tooth and nail, and fights. Fight with him. Die every day. Be born every day. Deny everything you have every day. The superior virtue is not to be free but to fight for freedom. Do not condescend to ask: "Shall we conquer? Shall we be conquered?" Fight on!

If I used to ask myself, over a coffin, "what good did it do the occupant to be born?" I now put the same question about anyone alive.

The capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers.

Since it cannot be overlooked by the Doctrine of Knowledge that Actual Knowledge does by no means present itself as a Unity, such as is assumed above but as a multiplicity, there is consequently a second task imposed upon it, - that of setting forth the ground of this apparent Multiplicity. It is of course understood that this ground is not to be derived from any outward source, but must be shown to be contained in the essential Nature of Knowledge itself as such; - and that therefore this problem, although apparently two-fold, is yet but one and the same, - namely, to set forth the essential Nature of Knowledge.

Speech is a mirror of the soul; as a man speaks, so is he.

Withdraw into yourself, as far as you can. Associate with those who will make a better man of you. Welcome those whom you yourself can improve. The process is mutual; for men learn while they teach.

We are all such accidents. We do not make up history and culture. We simply appear, not by our own choice. We make what we can of our condition with the means available. We must accept the mixture as we find it - the impurity of it, the tragedy of it, the hope of it.

No man is exempt from saying silly things; the mischief is to say them deliberately.

Things that have a common quality ever quickly seek their kind.

True science is distinctively the study of useless things. For the useful things will get studied without the aid of scientific men.

Well, as you know, I was blessed to do over a hundred events for my dear brother [Bernie Sanders]. And this is the first time I've had a chance to publicly endorse him again, but yes, indeed. I'll be in his corner that we're going to win this time. And it has to do with the Martin Luther King like criteria of assessing a candidate namely the issues of militarism, poverty, materialism, and racism, xenophobia in all of its forms that includes any kind of racism as you know against black people, brown people, yellow people, anybody, Arabs, Muslims, Jews, Palestinians, Kashmirians, Tibetans and so forth. So that there's no doubt that the my dear brother Bernie stands shoulders above any of the other candidates running in the Democratic primary when it comes to that Martin Luther King-like standards or criteria.

If evolution is a struggle for survival, why hasn't it ruthlessly eliminated altruists, who seem to increase another's prospects of survival at the cost of their own?

The Churches as Churches-as institutions affirming their own infallibility-are anti-Christian institutions. Between the Churches as such and Christianity, not only is there nothing in common except the name, but they are two quite opposite and opposing principles. The one represents pride, violence, self-assertion, immobility and death: the other humility, penitence, meekness, progress, and life.

In most cases, to be reasonable means not to be obstinate, which in turn points to conformity with reality as it is. The principle of adjustment is taken for granted. When the idea of reason was conceived, it was intended to achieve more than the mere regulation of the relation between means and ends: it was regarded as the instrument for understanding the ends, for determining them.

The "old maid" with her repressed cravings for tenderness, sex, and propagation, is rarely quite free of ressentiment. What we call "prudery," in contrast with true modesty, is but one of the numerous variants of sexual ressentiment. The habitual behavior of many old maids, who obsessively ferret out all sexually significant events in their surroundings in order to condemn them harshly, is nothing but sexual gratification transformed into ressentiment satisfaction. Thus the criticism accomplishes the very thing it pretends to condemn.

The baby, assailed by eyes, ears, nose, skin, and entrails at once, feels it all as one great blooming, buzzing confusion; and to the very end of life, our location of all things in one space is due to the fact that the original extents or bignesses of all the sensations which came to our notice at once, coalesced together into one and the same space.

His business is here, it is here that he is despised and vilified, it is here that he must carry out his undertaking.

I shall develop the thesis that anyone acting communicatively must, in performing any speech act, raise universal validity claims and suppose that they can be vindicated.

If the many, the specialists, gain the day, it will be the end of science as we know it - of great science. It will be a spiritual catastrophe comparable in its consequences to nuclear armament.

I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight. All things are delivered unto me of my Father: and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal him. Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

It is a great mortification to the vanity of man, that his utmost art and industry can never equal the meanest of nature's productions, either for beauty or value. Art is only the under-workman, and is employed to give a few strokes of embellishment to those pieces, which come from the hand of the master.

Dear youths, I warn you cherish peace divine, And in your hearts lay deep these words of mine.