Since the state must necessarily provide subsistence for the criminal poor while undergoing punishment, not to do the same for the poor who have not offended is to give a premium on crime.

If one awakens in men the idea of freedom then the free men will incessantly go on to free themselves; if on the contrary, one only educates them, then they will at all times accommodate themselves to circumstance in the most highly educated and elegant manner and degenerate into subservient cringing souls.

People crushed by law, have no hopes but from power. If laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to laws; and those who have much to hope and nothing to lose, will always be dangerous.

When Christianity came into the world the task was simply to proclaim Christianity. The same is the case wherever Christianity is introduced into a country the religion of which is not Christianity.

In the "fulfillment" of both the laws and duty, ... the moral disposition ceases to be the universal, opposed to inclination, and inclination ceases to be particular, opposed to the law.

An act has no ethical quality whatever unless it be chosen out of several all equally possible.

The bourgeois public sphere may be conceived above all as the sphere of private people come together as a public; they soon claimed the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labor.

In fact of course, this 'productive' worker cares as much about the crappy shit he has to make as does the capitalist himself who employs him, and who also couldn't give a damn for the junk.

More is given to us than to any people at any time before; and, therefore, more is required of us. We have made, and still are making, enormous advances on material lines. It is necessary that we commensurately advance on moral lines. Civilization, as it progresses, requires a higher conscience, a keener sense of justice, a warmer brotherhood, a wider, loftier, truer public spirit. Falling these, civilization must pass into destruction. It cannot be maintained on the ethics of savagery. For civilization knits men more and more closely together, and constantly tends to subordinate the individual to the whole, and to make more and more important social conditions.

Clothe yourself with a hero's courage, and withdraw for a little space from the opinions of the common man. Form a proper conception of the image of virtue, a thing of exceeding beauty and grandeur; this image is not to be worshipped by us with incense or garlands, but with sweat and blood.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legislative powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State.

If you don't have a consistent goal in life, you can't live it in a consistent way."

The endeavor of scientific research to see events in their more general connection in order to determine their laws, is a legitimate and useful occupation. Any protest against such efforts, in the name of freefom from restrictive conditions, would be fruitless if science did not naïvely identify the abstractions called rules and laws with the actually efficacious forces, and confuse the probability that B will follow A with the actual effort make B follow A.

When you make the two into one, you will become children of Adam, and when you say, 'Mountain, move from here!' it will move.

The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny ; flattery to treachery ; standing armies to arbitrary government ; and the glory of God to the temporal interest of the clergy.

I must also call your attention to the fact that it is crucial for my viewpoint that human behavior is to a large extent charged with a considerable amount of energy, but that in contrast to Freud I do not consider this energy to be sexual, but the vital energy within any organism which, according to biological laws, gives man the desire to live, and that means to adapt himself to the social necessities of his society. To go back to what I consider to be the misunderstanding, it has never been my position that society only deforms or manifests that which is already there. If we make the distinction between human necessities in general and human desires in particular then indeed, society creates particular desires which, however, follow the general laws of the necessities rooted in human nature.

If you want to be respected by others the great thing is to respect yourself. Only by that, only by self-respect will you compel others to respect you.

The punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one after another between you and what you want to hold on to.

The only subversive mind is the one that questions the obligation to exist; all the others, the anarchist at the top of the list, compromise with the established order.

We think in generalities, but we live in detail. To make the past live, we must perceive it in detail in addition to thinking of it in generalities.

Take heed lest any man deceive you: For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows. But take heed to yourselves: for they shall deliver you up to councils; and in the synagogues ye shall be beaten: and ye shall be brought before rulers and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them. And the gospel must first be published among all nations. But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost.

I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will-"the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts"-need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present-until next year-that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will.

Of course, there are those - Sandel, Walzer and Dworkin, for example - who propose "communitarian" ways of thinking, as a further move in the direction which a sophisticated liberalism requires. But none of them is prepared to accept the real price of community: which is sanctity, intolerance, exclusion, and a sense that life's meaning depends upon obedience, and also on vigilance against the enemy.

This dysfunction of power was related to a central excess: what might be called the monarchical 'super-power', which identified the right to punish with the personal power of the sovereign.

The world is nothing but 'world-as-meaning.'

Besides, you also have many Jews living in the country, who do much harm... You should know the Jews blaspheme and violate the name of our Savior day for day... for that reason you, Milords and men of authority, should not tolerate but expel them. They are our public enemies and incessantly blaspheme our Lord Jesus Christ, they call our Blessed Virgin Mary a harlot and her Holy Son a bastard and to us they give the epithet of changelings and abortions. Therefore deal with them harshly as they do nothing but excruciatingly blaspheme our Lord Jesus Christ, trying to rob us of our lives, our health, our honor and belongings.

The Law of conservation of energy tells us we can't get something for nothing, but we refuse to believe it.

States as great engines move slowly.

If you want to go down deep you do not need to travel far; indeed, you don't have to leave your most immediate and familiar surroundings.

Most men would feel insulted, if it were proposed to employ them in throwing stones over a wall, and then in throwing them back, merely that they might earn their wages. But many are no more worthily employed now.

But your crime will be there, one hundred times denied, always there, dragging itself behind you. Then you will finally know that you have committed your life with one throw of the die, once and for all, and there is nothing you can do but tug our crime along until your death. Such is the law, just and unjust, of repentance. Then we will see what will become of your young pride.

I said to the almond tree: "Speak to me of God."and the almond tree blossomed.

Life is possible only by the deficiencies of our imagination and memory.

The best thing about the sciences is their philosophical ingredient, like life for an organic body. If one dephilosophizes the sciences, what remains left? Earth, air, and water.

Providence has already begun the punishment of the guilty; more than sixty regicides, the most guilty among them, have already died a violent death.

A whole from necessary substances is impossible. The whole, therefore, of substances is a whole of contingent things, and the world consists essentially of only contingent things.

Fools learn wisdom through misfortune.

Asked where he came from, he said, "I am a citizen of the world."

That most knowing of persons - gossip.

I resolved from the beginning of my quest that I would not be misled by sentiment and desire into beliefs for which there was no good evidence.

Inflation is an increase in the quantity of money without a corresponding increase in the demand for money, i.e., for cash holdings.

Art is a jealous mistress.

The Word takes to Himself one man, for He takes unity. He does not take schisms to Himself, nor does He take heresies. So it is one man who is taken, and his Head is Christ. This is that "blessed man who hath not walked in the council of the ungodly" (Ps. 1:1); this is he that is assumed. He is not outside of us. Let us be in Him, and we shall be assumed; let us be in Him, and we shall be chosen. Therefore this one man that is taken to become the temple of God, is at once many and one.

The victory of vivisection marks a great advance in the triumph of ruthless, non-moral utilitarianism over the old world of ethical law; a triumph in which we, as well as animals, are already the victims, and of which Dachau and Hiroshima mark the more recent achievements.

Space and time are commonly regarded as the forms of existence of the real world, matter as its substance. A definite portion of matter occupies a definite part of space at a definite moment of time. It is in the composite idea of motion that these three fundamental conceptions enter into intimate relationship.

The human body is a machine which winds its own springs.