Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.

For the Supernatural, entering a human soul, opens to it new possibilities both of good and evil. From that point the road branches: one way to sanctity, love, humility, the other to spiritual pride, self-righteousness, persecuting zeal. And no way back to the mere humdrum virtues and vices of the unawakened soul. If the Divine call does not make us better, it will make us very much worse. Of all bad men religious bad men are the worst. Of all created beings the wickedest is one who originally stood in the immediate presence of God.

No one is ignorant that there are two avenues by which opinions are received into the soul, which are its two principal powers: the understanding and the will.

In all things success depends on previous preparation, and without such previous preparation there is sure to be failure. If what is to be spoken be previously determined, there will be no stumbling. If affairs be previously determined, there will be no difficulty with them. If one's actions have been previously determined, there will be no sorrow in connection with them. If principles of conduct have been previously determined, the practice of them will be inexhaustible.

I once had a conversation with a famous French philosopher who's a friend of mine. And I said to him, "Why the hell do you write so badly? Pourquoi tu écris si mal?" ... And this was Michel Foucault. He was a very smart guy and wrote a lot of very good stuff but in general he just wrote badly. When you heard him give a lecture in Berkeley, it was perfectly clear, just as clear as I am. ... And he said, "Well, in France, it would be regarded as somewhat childish and naive if you wrote clearly. ... In France you've got to have 10% incomprehensible."

Psychological disorders are symptoms of a blocked story... The patient is cured the moment she narrates herself free.

In the long run, there is nothing to stop intelligent agents from identifying the molecular signature of experience below hedonic zero and eliminating it altogether - even in insects. Nociception is vital; pain is optional. I tentatively predict that the world's last unpleasant experience in our forward light-cone will be a precisely datable event - perhaps some micro-pain in an obscure marine invertebrate a few centuries hence.

We cannot think any true thought unless we want the true. Thinking is itself an aspect of practice.

If life is deprived of any meaningful closure, it will be ended in non-time.

What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like, "What does it matter so long as they are contented?" We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven - a senile benevolence who, as they say, "liked to see young people enjoying themselves" and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, "a good time was had by all".

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.

Applaud us when we run, console us when we fall, cheer us when we recover.

The poor maidservant who used to say that she only believed in God when she had a toothache puts all theologians to shame.

It is not by recognizing the want of courage in someone else that you acquire courage yourself.

But as more arts were invented, and some were directed to the necessities of life, others to recreation, the inventors of the latter were naturally always regarded as wiser than the inventors of the former, because their branches of knowledge did not aim at utility. ... This is why the mathematical arts were founded in Egypt; for there the priestly caste was allowed to be at leisure.

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

They should always be heard, and fairly and kindly answer'd, when they ask after any thing they would know, and desire to be informed about. Curiosity should be as carefully cherish'd in children, as other appetites suppress'd.

Audacity augments courage; hesitation, fear.

Many receive advice, few profit by it.

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

The superior man accords with the course of the Mean. Though he may be all unknown, unregarded by the world, he feels no regret. It is only the sage who is able for this.

Now who are the individuals who are the greatest benefactors of the living generation of mankind? I should say: Confucius and Lao-Tse; the Buddha; the Prophets of Israel and Judah; Zoroaster, Jesus, Muhammad; and Socrates.

He and his tyrannicide! I am in a mad fury about these explosions. If that is the new world! Damn O'Donovan Rossa; damn him behind and before, above, below, and roundabout; damn, deracinate, and destroy him, root and branch, self and company, world without end. Amen. I write that for sport if you like, but I will pray in earnest, O Lord, if you cannot convert, kindly delete him!

Owing to the identification of religion with virtue, together with the fact that the most religious men are not the most intelligent, a religious education gives courage to the stupid to resist the authority of educated men, as has happened, for example, where the teaching of evolution has been made illegal. So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence; and in this respect ministers of religion follow gospel authority more closely than in some others.

There are as many nights as days, and the one is just as long as the other in the year's course. Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word "happy" would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.

The small are always dependent on the great; they are "small" precisely because they think they are independent. The great thinker is one who can hear what is greatest in the work of other "greats" and who can transform it in an original manner.

Now, as the Word of God is the Son of God, so the love of God is the Holy Spirit.

Science fiction writers foresee the inevitable, and although problems and catastrophes may be inevitable, solutions are not.

It seems to me that the current political task in a society like ours is to criticize the working of institutions that are apparently the most neutral and independent, to criticize these institutions and attack them in such a way that the political violence that exercises itself obscurely through them becomes manifest, so that one can fight against them.

To abjure the notion of the "truly human" is to abjure the attempt to divinize the self as a replacement for a divinized world.

The hopes of the right-minded may be realized, those of fools are impossible.

When one learns something one first performs an act of will, because only by willing to learn can one learn.

While they denounce as subversive anarchy signs of independent thought, of thinking for themselves on the part of others lest such thought disturb the conditions by which they profit, they think quite literally for themselves, that is of themselves.

Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner: this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes? Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken: but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder.

Even purely intellectual progress brings about its revenges. Problems settled in a rough and ready way by rude men, absorbed in action, demand renewed attention and show themselves to be still unread riddles when men have time to think. The beneficent demon, doubt, whose name is Legion and who dwells amongst the tombs of old faiths, enters into mankind and thenceforth refuses to be cast out. Sacred customs, venerable dooms of ancestral wisdom, hallowed by tradition and professing to hold good for all time, are put to the question. Cultured reflection asks for their credentials; judges them by its own standards; finally, gathers those of which it approves into ethical systems, in which the reasoning is rarely much more than a decent pretext for the adoption of foregone conclusions.

A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system. It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated. The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin,- congestion of the brain, apoplexy, and strangulation.

Man is the higher Sense of our Planet; the star which connects it with the upper world; the eye which it turns towards Heaven.

Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.

When the throne of God is overturned, the rebel realizes that it is now his own responsibility to create the justice, order, and unity that he sought in vain within his own condition, and in this way to justify the fall of God. Then begins the desperate effort to create, at the price of crime and murder if necessary, the dominion of man.

Time, and reflection, and discussion, have produced their natural effect on minds eminently intelligent and candid. No intermediate shades of opinion are now left. There is no twilight. The light has been divided from the darkness. Two parties are ranged in battle array against each other. There is the standard of monopoly. Here is the standard of free trade; and by the standard of free trade I pledge myself to stand firmly.

The man, who in a fit of melancholy, kills himself today, would have wished to live had he waited a week.

Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wave-length of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.

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.

She believed in nothing; only her skepticism kept her from being an atheist.

There was a loud echo of Hume in Mach's work, as both emphasized the tangibility of all knowledge-ultimately, all knowledge is based in the senses. Mach also emphasized the internal nature of all knowledge, in that it is experienced in the mind. Finally, he emphasized the importance of quantitative and mathematical methods and models to understand sensory experience.

It seems to me obvious that infants and many animals that do not in any ordinary sense have a language or perform speech acts nonetheless have Intentional states. Only someone in the grip of a philosophical theory would deny that small babies can literally be said to want milk and that dogs want to be let out or believe that their master is at the door.

I'm not one of those who wants to stop Christian traditions. This is historically a Christian country. I'm a cultural Christian the same way as many of my friends call themselves cultural Jews or cultural Muslims. So, yes, I love singing carols along with everybody else. I'm not one of those who wants to purge our society of our Christian history.

We should have with each person the relationship of one conception of the universe to another conception of the universe, and not to a part of the universe.

All our problems are caused by forgetting what lives within us, and we sell our souls for the "bowl of stew" of bodily satisfactions.