To think we could have spared ourselves from living all that we have lived!

A vivid thought brings the power to paint it; and in proportion to the depth of its source is the force of its projection.

One who liberates his country by killing a tyrant is to be praised and rewarded.

What began as a "Romantic reaction" towards organic wholeness may or may not have hastened the discovery of electro-magnetic waves. But certainly the electro-magnetic discoveries have recreated the simultaneous "field" in all human affairs so that the human family now exists under conditions of a "global village." We live in a single constricted space resonant with tribal drums. So that concern with the "primitive" today is as banal as nineteenth-century concern with "progress," and as irrelevant to our problems. The new electronic interdependence recreates the world in the image of a global village.

Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual, consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.

To require that a so-called layman should not use his own reason in religious matters, particularly since religion is to be appreciated as moral, but instead follow the appointed clergyman and thus someone else's reason, is an unjust demand because as to morals every man must account for all his doings. The clergyman will not and even cannot assume such a responsibility.

Friendship is the greatest of worldly goods. Certainly to me it is the chief happiness of life. If I had to give a piece of advice to a young man about a place to live, I think I shd. say, 'sacrifice almost everything to live where you can be near your friends.

We are obliged to regard many of our original minds as crazy - at least until we have become as clever as they are.

The universal and lasting establishment of peace constitutes not merely a part, but the whole final purpose and end of the science of right as viewed within the limits of reason.

The hatefulness of a hated person is "real"-in hatred you see men as they are; you are disillusioned; but the loveliness of a loved person is merely a subjective haze concealing a "real" core of sexual appetite or economic association. Wars and poverty are "really" horrible; peace and plenty are mere physical facts about which men happen to have certain sentiments.

Whosoever will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's, the same shall save it. For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Then are the children free. Notwithstanding, lest we should offend them, go thou to the sea, and cast an hook, and take up the fish that first cometh up; and when thou hast opened his mouth, thou shalt find a piece of money: that take, and give unto them for me and thee.

Either be silent or say something better than silence.

The gallery in which the reporters sit has become a fourth estate of the realm.

The strengthening of behavior which results from reinforcement is appropriately called "conditioning". In operant conditioning we "strengthen" an operant in the sense of making a response more probable or, in actual fact, more frequent.

In all affairs - love, religion, politics, or business - it's a healthy idea, now and then, to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

One of the problems... both on the left and the right is that the... individual autonomy protected by liberalism tends to take more and more extreme versions... and... becomes self-undermining.

In Matthew 12:23 Christ says: "Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree bad and its fruit bad," as if to say: "Let the one who wishes to have good fruit begin by planting a good tree." Therefore, let the person who wishes to do good works being not with the works but with the believing, for this alone makes a person good.

In plain truth, lying is an accursed vice. We are not men, nor have any other tie upon another, but by our word.

Macaulay is like a book in breeches...He has occasional flashes of silence, that make his conversation perfectly delightful.

It is entirely clear that there is only one way in which great wars can be permanently prevented, and that is the establishment of an international government with a monopoly of serious armed force.

I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment.

Economic man deals with the "real world" in all its complexity. Administrative man recognizes that the world he perceives is a drastic simplified model... He makes his choices using a simple picture of the situation that takes into account just a few of the factors that he regards as most relevant and crucial.

Nature is too thin a screen; the glory of the One breaks in everywhere.

All human activity is prompted by desire. There is a wholly fallacious theory advanced by some earnest moralists to the effect that it is possible to resist desire in the interests of duty and moral principle. I say this is fallacious, not because no man ever acts from a sense of duty, but because duty has no hold on him unless he desires to be dutiful. If you wish to know what men will do, you must know not only, or principally, their material circumstances, but rather the whole system of their desires with their relative strengths.

If you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes.

I want death to find me planting my cabbages.

The slaves of developed industrial civilization are sublimated slaves.

Declining from the public ways, walk in unfrequented paths.

I have lived and slept in the same bed with English countesses and Prussian farm women... no woman has excited passions among women more than I have.

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilized men.

He who establishes his argument by noise and command shows that his reason is weak.

When asked why people give to beggars but not to philosophers, he replied, 'Because they expect they may become lame and blind, but never that they will become philosophers.'

No position is so false as having understood and still remaining alive.

No multitude is able to acquire any art whatsoever. Then if there is a kingly art, neither the collective body of the wealthy nor the whole people could ever acquire this science of statesmanship.

A millennial belief in a Holy God may have the effect of deepening the soul, but it is also obviously archaic, and modern influences would presently bring me up to date and reveal how antiquated my origins were. To turn away from those origins, however, has always seemed to me an utter impossibility. It would be a treason to my first consciousness to un-Jew myself.

Nature must not win the game, but she cannot lose. And whenever the conscious mind clings to hard and fast concepts and gets caught in its own rules and regulations-as is unavoidable and of the essence of civilized consciousness-nature pops up with her inescapable demands.

I live only because it is in my power to die when I choose to: without the idea of suicide, I'd have killed myself right away.

Reality is harsh to the feet of shadows.

If you have been given a talent, exercise it freely and happily like the sun: give everyone from your splendour.

You, Socrates, began by saying that virtue can't be taught, and now you are insisting on the opposite, trying to show that all things are knowledge, justice, soundness of mind, even courage, from which it would follow that virtue most certainly can be taught.

There's something about a pious man such as he. He will cheerfully cut your throat if it suits him, but he will hesitate to endanger the welfare of your immaterial and problematical soul.

People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars; and they pass by themselves without wondering.

Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation.

We tend to believe the premises because we can see that their consequences are true, instead of believing the consequences because we know the premises to be true. But the inferring of premises from consequences is the essence of induction; thus the method in investigating the principles of mathematics is really an inductive method, and is substantially the same as the method of discovering general laws in any other science.

A man should be mourned at his birth, not at his death.