We are obviously heading for revolution-something I have never once doubted since 1850. The first act will include a by no means gratifying rehash of the stupidities of '48-'49. However, that's how world history runs its course, and one has to take it as one finds it.

Now his principal doctrines were these. That atoms and the vacuum were the beginning of the universe; and that everything else existed only in opinion. (trans. Yonge 1853) The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space; everything else is merely thought to exist.

What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.

It was not until the Twelfth Century of our era that the Pentateuch as a whole was subjected to rational scrutiny. The man who undertook the ungrateful task was a learned Spanish rabbi, Abraham ben Meir ibn Esra. He unearthed many absurdities, but... it was not until five hundred years later that anything properly describable as scientific criticism... came into being. Its earliest shining lights were the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, and the Amsterdam Jew, Baruch Spinoza. ..and ever since then the Old Testament has been under searching and devastating examination. H. L. Mencken, Treatise on the Gods

A public can only arrive at enlightenment slowly. Through revolution, the abandonment of personal despotism may be engendered and the end of profit-seeking and domineering oppression may occur, but never a true reform of the state of mind. Instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones, will serve as the guiding reins of the great, unthinking mass. All that is required for this enlightenment is freedom; and particularly the least harmful of all that may be called freedom, namely, the freedom for man to make public use of his reason in all matters. But I hear people clamor on all sides: Don't argue! The officer says: Don't argue, drill! The tax collector: Don't argue, pay! The pastor: Don't argue, believe!

Apart from logical cogency, there is to me something a little odd about the ethical valuations of those who think that an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent Deity, after preparing the ground by many millions of years of lifeless nebulae, would consider Himself adequately rewarded by the final emergence of Hitler and Stalin and the H-bomb. Preface

In England, and in all Roman Catholic countries, the lottery of the church is in reality much more advantageous than is necessary.

There is a physical relation between physical things. But it is different with commodities.

Children should not be suffer'd to lose the consideration of human nature in the shufflings of outward conditions. The more they have, the better humor'd they should be taught to be, and the more compassionate and gentle to those of their brethren who are placed lower, and have scantier portions. If they are suffer'd from their cradles to treat men ill and rudely, because, by their father's title, they think they have a little power over them, at best it is ill-bred; and if care be not taken, will by degrees nurse up their natural pride into an habitual contempt of those beneath them. And where will that probably end but in oppression and cruelty?

Virtue refuses facility for her companion ... the easy, gentle, and sloping path that guides the footsteps of a good natural disposition is not the path of true virtue. It demands a rough and thorny road.

My mother spoke of Christ to my father, by her feminine and childlike virtues, and, after having borne his violence without a murmur or complaint, gained him at the close of his life to Christ.

Let us rejoice and give thanks. Not only are we become Christians, but we are become Christ. My brothers, do you understand the grace of God that is given us? Wonder, rejoice, for we are made Christ! If He is the Head, and we the members, then together He and we are the whole man.... This would be foolish pride on our part, were it not a gift of his bounty. But this is what He promised by the mouth of the Apostle: You are the body of Christ, and severally His members.

A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images. And in a good novel, the whole of the philosophy has passed into the images. But if once the philosophy overflows the characters and action, and therefore looks like a label stuck on the work, the plot loses its authenticity and the novel its life. Nevertheless, a work that is to last cannot dispense with profound ideas. And this secret fusion between experiences and ideas, between life and reflection on the meaning of life, is what makes the great novelist.

No concrete test of what is really true has ever been agreed upon.

This to the right, that to the left hand strays, and all are wrong, but wrong in different ways.

It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish.

But what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures gradually brought about.

Beating is the worst, and therefore the last means to be us'd in the correction of children, and that only in the cases of extremity, after all gently ways have been try'd, and proved unsuccessful; which, if well observ'd, there will very seldom be any need of blows.

What the great learning teaches, is to illustrate illustrious virtue; to renovate the people; and to rest in the highest excellence. The point where to rest being known, the object of pursuit is then determined; and, that being determined, a calm unperturbedness may be attained to. To that calmness there will succeed a tranquil repose. In that repose there may be careful deliberation, and that deliberation will be followed by the attainment of the desired end.

People who originally have no means but are ultimately able to earn a great deal, through whatever talents they may possess, almost always come to think that these are permanent capital and that what they gain through them is interest. Accordingly, they do not put aside part of their earnings to form a permanent capital, but spend their money as fast as they earn it. But they are then often reduced to poverty because their earnings decrease or come to an end after their talent, which was of a transitory nature, is exhausted, as happens, for example, in the case of almost all the fine arts; or because it could be brought to bear only under a particular set of circumstances that has ceased to exist.

What I give is the morphology of the use of an expression. I show that it has kinds of uses of which you had not dreamed. In philosophy one feels forced to look at a concept in a certain way. What I do is suggest, or even invent, other ways of looking at it. I suggest possibilities of which you had not previously thought. You thought that there was one possibility, or only two at most. But I made you think of others. Furthermore, I made you see that it was absurd to expect the concept to conform to those narrow possibilities. Thus your mental cramp is relieved, and you are free to look around the field of use of the expression and to describe the different kinds of uses of it.

Men use thought only to justify their wrongdoings, and speech only to conceal their thoughts.

The necessary connexion of movement and time is real and time is something the soul constructs in movement.

And in these foure things, Opinion of Ghosts, Ignorance of second causes, Devotion towards what men fear, and Taking of things Casuall for Prognostics, consisteth the Natural seed of Religion; which by reason of the different Fancies, Judgements, and Passions of severall men, hath grown up into ceremonies so different, that those which are used by one man, are for the most part ridiculous to another.

I don't believe in flying saucers... The energy requirements of interstellar travel are so great that it is inconceivable to me that any creatures piloting their ships across the vast depths of space would do so only in order to play games with us over a period of decades.

The value of life lies not in the length of days, but in the use we make of them... Whether you find satisfaction in life depends not on your tale of years, but on your will.

Truth never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own straightforwardness is the severest correction.

Everything considered, a determined soul will always manage.

When our Lord and Master Jesus Christ said, "Repent," he willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.

If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.

Half of the human race lives in manifest obedience to the lunar rhythm; and there is evidence to show that the psychological and therefore the spiritual life, not only of women, but of men too, mysteriously ebbs and flows with the changes of the moon. There are unreasoned joys, inexplicable miseries, laughters and remorses without a cause. Their sudden and fantastic alternations constitute the ordinary weather of our minds. These moods, of which the more gravely numinous may be hypostasized as gods, the lighter, if we will, as hobgoblins and fairies, are the children of the blood and humours. But the blood and humours obey, among many other masters, the changing moon. Touching the soul directly through the eyes and, indirectly, along the dark channels of the blood, the moon is doubly a divinity.

Nothing is terrible except fear itself.

Communism... is the genuine resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man; it is the true resolution of the conflict between existence and essence, objectification and self-affirmation, freedom and necessity, individual and species. It is the riddle of history solved and knows itself as the solution.

The faith that stands on authority is not faith.

It is a sign of wisdom to be able to use parrhesia without falling into the garrulousness of athuroglossos... One of the problems... how to distinguish that which must be said from that which should be kept silent.

The first thing to realize, if you wish to become a philosopher, is that most people go through life with a whole world of beliefs that have no sort of rational justification, and that one man's world of beliefs is apt to be incompatible with another man's, so that they cannot both be right. People's opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people is a secondary consideration.

You take souls for vegetables.... The gardener can decide what will become of his carrots but no one can choose the good of others for them.

He that will have his son have a respect for him and his orders, must himself have a great reverence for his son.

Don't get involved in partial problems, but always take flight to where there is a free view over the whole single great problem, even if this view is still not a clear one.

Howitt says of the man who found the great nugget which weighed twenty-eight pounds, at the Bendigo diggings in Australia: - "He soon began to drink; got a horse, and rode all about, generally at full gallop, and, when he met people, called out to inquire if they knew who he was, and then kindly informed them that he was 'the bloody wretch that had found the nugget.' At last he rode full speed against a tree, and nearly knocked his brains out." I think, however, there was no danger of that, for he had already knocked his brains out against the nugget.

In public, as well as in private expences, great wealth may, perhaps, frequently be admitted as an apology for great folly.

There are several passages in Hobbes's translation of Homer, which, if they had been writ on purpose to ridicule that poet, would have done very well. Alexander Pope, as quoted in Observations, Anecdotes, and Characters, of Books and Men (1820) by Joseph Spence, p. 285

All those of you who rejoice in peace, now it is time to judge the truth....Undoubtedly in days gone by there were holy men as Scripture tells,For God stated that he left behind seven thousand men in safety,And there are many priests and kings who are righteous under the law,There you find so many of the prophets, and many of the people too.Tell me which of the righteous of that time claimed an altar for himself?That wicked nation perpetrated a very large number of crimes,They sacrificed to idols and may prophets were put to death,Yet not a single one of the righteous withdrew from unity.The righteous endured the unrighteous while waiting for the winnower:They all mingled in one temple but were not mingled in their hearts;They said such things against them yet they had a single altar.

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

Much learning does not teach understanding.

It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 4:4 (KJV) Said to Satan. 

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.

Nothing makes the earth seem so spacious as to have friends at a distance; they make the latitudes and longitudes.

The sublime is excited in me by the great stoical doctrine, Obey thyself.