Most of what we strive for in our modern life uses the apparatus of goal seeking that was originally set up to seek goals in the state of nature.

They defend their errors as if they were defending their inheritance.

Christianity is at the very root of the evil that has corrupted the West. This is the truth, and it admits no doubt.

The manner of men's Hero-worship, verily it is the innermost fact of their existence, and determines all the rest,-at public hustings, in private drawing-rooms, in church, in market, and wherever else. Have true reverence, and what indeed is inseparable therefrom, reverence the right man, all is well; have sham-reverence, and what also follows, greet with it the wrong man, then all is ill, and there is nothing.

A young man should serve his parents at home and be respectful to elders outside his home. He should be earnest and truthful, loving all, but become intimate with humaneness. After doing this, if he has energy to spare, he can study literature and the arts.

Under all speech that is good for anything there lies a silence that is better.

The last fact which knowledge can discover is that the world is a manifestation, and in every way a puzzling manifestation, of the universal will to live.

If you have had your attention directed to the novelties in thought in your own lifetime, you will have observed that almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.

They are splendidly built [Italian Hospitals], the best food and drink are at hand, the attendants are very diligent, the physicians are learned, the beds and coverings are very clean, and the bedsteads are painted. As soon as a sick man is brought in, all his clothes are taken off in the presence of a notary and are faithfully kept for him. He is then laid in a handsomely painted bed with clean sheets. Two physicians are fetched at once. Attendants come with food and drink, served in immaculate glass vessels; these are not touched with as much as a finger but are brought on a tray.

All men are almost led to believe not of proof, but by attraction. This way is base, ignoble, and irrelevant; every one therefore disavows it. Each one professes to believe and even to love nothing but what he knows to be worthy of belief and love.

The system becomes more coherent as it is further extended. The elements which we require for explaining a new class of facts are already contained in our system. Different members of the theory run together, and we have thus a constant convergence to unity. In false theories, the contrary is the case.

If the result of a war is to change nothing, but only to destroy, with the mere result that a group of human beings who do not differ notably from the conquered acquires preponderant advantages for the future, there is lacking the affective strength of an existence that has inspired faith, of an existence whose destiny would have been decided by the war.

Lincoln's place in the history of the United States and of mankind will, nevertheless, be next to that of Washington!

Some days will be sublime. Others will be merely wonderful. But critically, there will be one particular texture ("what it feels like") of consciousness that will be missing from our lives; and that will be the texture of nastiness.

For love is ever the beginning of Knowledge, as fire is of light.

Suppose that I wish to deserve the title of "robber of remorse" and that I place in myself all the townspeople's repentence?

I love liberty, and I loathe constraint, dependence, and all their kindred annoyances. As long as my purse contains money it secures my independence, and exempts me from the trouble of seeking other money, a trouble of which I have always had a perfect horror; and the dread of seeing the end of my independence, makes me proportionately unwilling to part with my money. The money that we possess is the instrument of liberty, that which we lack and strive to obtain is the instrument of slavery.

Let thy mind rule thy tongue!

You are a little soul carrying a corpse around, as Epictetus used to say.

The direction of the world overwhelms me at this time. In the long run, all the continents (yellow, black and brown) will spill over onto Old Europe. They are hundreds and hundreds of millions. They are hungry and they are not afraid to die. We no longer know how to die or how to kill. We could preach, but Europe believes in nothing. So, we must wait for the year 1000 or a miracle. For my part, I find it harder and harder to live before a wall.

The best state for human nature is that in which, while no one is poor, no one desires to be richer, nor has any reason to fear being thrust back by the efforts of others to push themselves forward.

After World War II, we hoped the world might be united for the sake of peacemaking. Now the world is being "globalized" for the sake of trade and the so-called free market - for the sake, that is, of plundering the world for cheap labor, cheap energy, and cheap materials. How nations, let alone regions and communities, are to shape and protect themselves within this "global economy" is far from clear.

Any loss of identity prompts people to seek reassurance and rediscovery of themselves by testing, and even by violence. Today, the electric revolution, the wired planet, and the information environment involve everybody in everybody to the point of individual extinction.

Service of the people by sciences and arts will only exist when men live with the people and as the people live, and without presenting any claims will offer their scientific and artistic services, which the people will be free to accept or decline as they please.

As for the life of money-making, it is one of constraint, and wealth is manifestly not the good of which we are in search, for it is only useful as a means to something else, and for this reason there is less to be said for it than for the ends mentioned before, which are, at any rate, desired for their own sakes.

The film concludes with ... the most nauseatingly luscious, the most penetratingly vulgar mammy song that it has ever been my lot to hear. My flesh crept as the loud speaker poured out those sodden words, the greasy, sagging melody. I felt ashamed of myself for listening to such things, for even being a member of the species to which such things are addressed.

Every book is a quotation; and every house is a quotation out of all forests and mines and stone-quarries; and every man is a quotation from all his ancestors.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

Modern science has imposed on humanity the necessity for wandering. Its progressive thought and its progressive technology make the transition through time, from generation to generation, a true migration into uncharted seas of adventure.

And O! how the mind is here washed clean of all its early ingrafted Jewish superstition ! It is the most profitable and elevating reading which is possible in the world. It has been the solace of my life, and will be the solace of my death.

When I found myself regarded as respectable, I began to wonder what sins I had committed. I must be very wicked, I thought. I began to engage in the most uncomfortable introspection. Interview with Irwin Ross, September 1957;If there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence.

Stupidity or reason? Oh, there was no choice now. It was imbecility every time.

He the devil always sends errors into the world in pairs-pairs of opposites. And he always encourages us to spend a lot of time thinking which is the worse. You see why, of course? He relies on your extra dislike of the one error to draw you gradually into the opposite one. But do not let us be fooled. We have to keep our eyes on the goal and go straight through between both errors. We have no other concern than that with either of them.

That is why St. John of the Cross calls faith a night. With those who have received a Christian education, the lower parts of the soul become attached to these mysteries when they have no right at all to do so. That is why such people need a purification of which St. John of the Cross describes the stages. Atheism and incredulity constitute an equivalent of such a purification.

I do not have much liking for the too famous existential philosophy, and, to tell the truth, I think its conclusions false.

Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

The moment a sovereign removes the idea of security and protection from his subjects, and declares that he is everything and they nothing, when he declares that no contract he makes with them can or ought to bind him, he then declares war upon them: he is no longer sovereign; they are no longer subjects.

Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.

They men have corrupted this order by making profane things what they should make of holy things, because in fact, we believe scarcely any thing except which pleases us.

The more progress that has been made toward eradicating social injustices, the more intolerable the remaining injustices seem, and thus the moral imperative to mobilizing to correct them.

Where there is politics or economics, there is no morality.

There is no conversation more boring than the one where everybody agrees.