Whoever finishes a revolution only halfway, digs his own grave.

What a singular destiny has been that of this remarkable man! To be regarded in his own age as a classic, and in ours as a companion! To receive from his contemporaries that full homage which men of genius have in general received only from posterity! To be more intimately known to posterity than other men are known to their contemporaries!

America is 100% 18th Century. The 18th century had chucked out the principle of metaphor and analogy - the basic fact that as A is to B so is C to D. AB:CD. It can see AB relations. But relations in four terms are still verboten. This amounts to deep occultation of nearly all human thought for the USA.

A scientist worthy of the name, above all a mathematician, experiences in his work the same impression as an artist; his pleasure is as great and of the same nature. ...we work not only to obtain the positive results which, according to the profane, constitute our one and only affection, as to experience this esthetic emotion and to convey it to others who are capable of experiencing it.

Virtue cannot dwell with wealth either in a city or in a house.

Virtue is the death of conscience because it is the habit of Good, and yet the ethic of the honest man infinitely prefers virtue to the noblest agonies of conscience. Thus, being poses nonbeing and eliminates it. There is only being.

There is no cure for birth and death save to enjoy the interval.

We are observing ourselves being observed by the painter, and made visible to his eyes by the same light that enables us to see him. And just as we are about to apprehend ourselves, transcribed by his hand as though in a mirror, we find that we can in fact apprehend nothing of that mirror but its lusterless back. The other side of a psyche.

There is no original truth, only original error.

It cannot at this time be too often repeated; line upon line; precept upon precept; until it comes into the currency of a proverb, To innovate is not to reform.

One must be something in order to do something.

It's my belief that the Universe possesses, in its essence, fractal properties of a very complex sort and that the pursuit of science shares those properties. It follows that any part of the Universe that remains un-understood, and any part of scientific investigation that remains unresolved, however small that might be in comparison to what is understood and resolved, contains within it all the complexity of the original. Therefore, we'll never finish. No matter how far we go, the road ahead will be as long as it was at the start, and that's the secret of the Universe.

The young are really the heirs to a generation of incompetence.

The difference between a Humanist and a lunatic is in fact one of degree.

Government must be a transparent garment which tightly clings to the people's body.

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

Among a people without fellow-feeling, especially if they read and speak different languages, the united public opinion, necessary to the working of the representative government, cannot exist.

The appreciation of the merits of art (of the emotions it conveys) depends upon an understanding of the meaning of life, what is seen as good and evil. Good and evil are defined by religions.

Anyone who studies present and ancient affairs will easily see how in all cities and all peoples there still exist, and have always existed, the same desires and passions. Thus, it is an easy matter for him who carefully examines past events to foresee future events in a republic and to apply the remedies employed by the ancients, or, if old remedies cannot be found, to devise new ones based upon the similarity of the events. But since these matters are neglected or not understood by those who read, or, if understood, remain unknown to those who govern, the result is that the same problems always exist in every era.

The three great elements of modern civilization, gunpowder, printing, and the Protestant religion.

For why do you hasten to remove things that hurt your eyes, but if anything gnaws your mind, defer the time of curing it from year to year?

The violence and injustice of the rulers of mankind is an ancient evil, for which, I am afraid, the nature of human affairs can scarce admit a remedy.

We must wish either for that which actually exists or for that which cannot in any way exist - or, still better, for both. That which is and that which cannot be are both outside the realm of becoming.

Undue cultivation of the inward or Dynamical province leads to idle, visionary, impracticable courses, and, especially in rude eras, to Superstition and Fanaticism, with their long train of baleful and well-known evils. Undue cultivation of the outward, again, though less immediately prejudicial, and even for the time productive of many palpable benefits, must, in the long-run, by destroying Moral Force, which is the parent of all other Force, prove not less certainly, and perhaps still more hopelessly, pernicious. This, we take it, is the grand characteristic of our age. By our skill in Mechanism, it has come to pass, that in the management of external things we excel all other ages; while in whatever respects the pure moral nature, in true dignity of soul and character, we are perhaps inferior to most civilised ages.

The significance of that 'absolute commandment', know thyself - whether we look at it in itself or under the historical circumstances of its first utterance - is not to promote mere self-knowledge in respect of the particular capacities, character, propensities, and foibles of the single self. The knowledge it commands means that of man's genuine reality - of what is essentially and ultimately true and real - of spirit as the true and essential being.

That there should one Man die ignorant who had capacity for Knowledge, this I call a tragedy.

Unless man have a natural bent in accordance with nature's, he has no chance of understanding nature at all.

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.

Quietism is the attitude of people who say, "let others do what I cannot do." The doctrine I am presenting before you is precisely the opposite of this, since it declares that there is no reality except in action. It goes further, indeed, and adds, "Man is nothing else but what he purposes, he exists only in so far as he realizes himself, he is therefore nothing else but the sum of his actions, nothing else but what his life is." Hence we can well understand why some people are horrified by our teaching.

The only good histories are those that have been written by the persons themselves who commanded in the affairs whereof they write.

Literature is the Thought of thinking Souls.

In a valiant suffering for others, not in a slothful making others suffer for us, did nobleness ever lie.

The emotions I feel are no more meant to be shown in their unadulterated state than the inner organs by which we live.

Wealth begins in a tight roof that keeps the rain and wind out; in a good pump that yields you plenty of sweet water; in two suits of clothes, so to change your dress when you are wet; in dry sticks to burn; in a good double-wick lamp; and three meals; in a horse, or a locomotive, to cross the land; in a boat to cross the sea; in tools to work with; in books to read; and so, in giving, on all sides, by tolls and auxiliaries, the greatest possible extension to our powers, as if it added feet, and hands, and eyes, and blood, length to the day, and knowledge, and good-will.Wealth begins with these articles of necessity.

We have two ears and one mouth, so we should listen more than we say.

Only the person who has faith in himself is able to be faithful to others.

Korell is that frequent phenomenon in history: the republic whose ruler has every attribute of the absolute monarch but the name. It therefore enjoyed the usual despotism unrestrained even by those two moderating influences in the legitimate monarchies: regal, honor and court etiquette.

Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!

No one can flatter himself that he is immune to the spirit of his own epoch, or even that he possesses a full understanding of it. Irrespective of our conscious convictions, each one of us, without exception, being a particle of the general mass, is somewhere attached to, colored by, or even undermined by the spirit which goes through the mass. Freedom stretches only as far as the limits of our consciousness.

So long as man remains free he strives for nothing so incessantly and so painfully as to find some one to worship.

We accumulate our opinions at an age when our understanding is at its weakest.

To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born, and yet not become desperate if there is no birth in our lifetime.

Children and fools speak the truth; and somehow they find happiness in their sincerity.

Man does not exercise his thought because he finds it amusing, but because, obliged as he is to live immersed in the world and to force his way among things, he finds himself under the necessity of organizing his psychic activities, which are not very different from those of the anthropoid, in the form of thought - which is what the animal does not do.

The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.