Common sense doesn't have the last word in ethics or anywhere else, but it has, as J. L. Austin said about language, the first word: it should be examined before it is discarded.

The open society is one in which men have learned to be to some extent critical of taboos, and to base decisions on the authority of their own intelligence.

Revolutionaries do not make revolutions! The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and when they can pick it up. Armed uprising by itself has never yet led to revolution.

Nature too remains, so far as we have yet come, ever a frightful Machine of Death: everywhere monstrous revolution, inexplicable vortices of movement; a kingdom of Devouring, of the maddest tyranny; a baleful Immense: the few light-points disclose but a so much the more appalling Night, and terrors of all sorts must palsy every observer.

A wise man sees as much as he ought, not as much as he can

Moral Teleology supplies the deficiency in physical Teleology, and first establishes a Theology; because the latter, if it did not borrow from the former without being observed, but were to proceed consistently, could only found a Demonology, which is incapable of any definite concept.

For those who want 'to change life", 'to reinvent love,' God is nothing but a hindrance.

The hearing ear is always found close to the speaking tongue.

When the Superior Man (Junzi) eats he does not try to stuff himself; at rest he does not seek perfect comfort; he is diligent in his work and careful in speech. He avails himself to people of the Tao and thereby corrects himself. This is the kind of person of whom you can say, "he loves learning."

Transcendence constitutes selfhood.

To prove the Gospels by a miracle is to prove an absurdity by something contrary to nature.

Experience teaches only the teachable...

We will not go to Heaven,Goetz, and even if we both entered it, we would not have eyes to see each other, nor hands to touch each other. Up there, God gets all the attention.... We can only love on this earth and against God.

It's better to bet on this life than on the next.

Immortality. I notice that as soon as writers broach this question they begin to quote. I hate quotation. Tell me what you know.

What! You would convict me from my own words, and bring against me what I had said or written elsewhere. You may act in that manner with those who dispute by established rules. We live from hand to mouth, and say anything that strikes our mind with probability, so that we are the only people who are really at liberty.

If Papists can be supposed to be as good subjects as others, they may be equally tolerated... If all subjects should be equally countenanced, & imployd by the Prince. the Papist[s] have an equall title.

I believe that one of the things Christianity says is that sound doctrines are all useless. That you have to change your life. (Or the direction of your life.)

To rank the effort above the prize may be called love.

The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

Seeing only what is fair, Sipping only what is sweet, Thou dost mock at fate and care.

Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.

How many worthy men have we seen survive their own reputation!

Do not repeat slander; you should not hear it, for it is the result of hot temper.

He thinks like a philosopher, but governs like a king.

As one digs deeper into the national character of the Americans, one sees that they have sought the value of everything in this world only in the answer to this single question: how much money will it bring in?

You have not that power you ought to have over him, till he comes to be more afraid of offending so good a friend than of losing some part of his future expectation.

The more you obey your conscience, the more your conscience will demand of you.

My dignity as a man, my human right which consists of refusing to obey any other man, and to determine my own acts in conformity with my convictions is reflected by the equally free conscience of all and confirmed by the consent of all humanity. My personal freedom, confirmed by the liberty of all, extends to infinity. The materialistic conception of freedom is therefore a very positive, very complex thing, and above all, eminently social, because it can be realized only in society and by the strictest equality and solidarity among all men.

We are always on stage, even when we are stabbed in earnest at the end.

Change is one thing, progress is another.

"I wish I had never been born," she said. "What are we born for?" "For infinite happiness," said the Spirit. "You can step out into it at any moment..."

A spectre is haunting Europe; the spectre of Communism.

According to one mode... nature is thus denominated, viz. the first subject matter to every thing which contains in itself the principle of motion and mutation. But after another mode it is denominated form, which subsists according to definition: for as art is called that which subsists according to art, and that which is artificial; so likewise nature is both called that which is according to nature, and that which is natural. ...that which is composed from these is not nature, but consists from nature; as, for instance, man. And this is nature in a greater degree than matter: for every thing is then said to be, when it is form in energy... entelecheia, rather than when it is incapacity.

If the State, modeled after the universe, is split into two spheres or classes of beings - wherein the free represent the ideas and the unfree the concrete and sensate things - then the ultimate and uppermost order remains unrealized by both. By using sensate things as tools or organs, the ideas obtain a direct relationship to the apparitions and enter into them as souls. God, however, as identity of the highest order, remains above all reality and eternally has merely an indirect relationship. If then in the higher moral order the State represents a second nature, then the divine can never have anything other than an indirect relationship to it, never can it bear any real relationship to it, and religion, if it seeks to preserve itself in unscathed pure ideality, can therefore never exist - even in the most perfect State - other than esoterically in the form of mystery cults.

There are limits beyond which your folly will not carry you. I am glad of that. In fact, I am relieved.

All things must needs be borne on through the calm void moving at equal rate with unequal weights.

Thus there is nothing waste, nothing dead in the universe; no chaos, no confusions, save in appearence. We might compare this to the appearence of a pond in the distance, where we can see the confused movement and swarming of the fish, without distinguishing the fish themselves.Thus we are that each living body has a dominante entelechy, which in case of an animal is the soul, but the members of this living body are full of other living things, plants and animals, of which each has in turn ita dominant entelechy or soul.

In every country it always is and must be the interest of the great body of the people to buy whatever they want of those who sell it cheapest. The proposition is so very manifest that it seems ridiculous to take any pains to prove it; nor could it ever have been called in question had not the interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers confounded the common sense of mankind. Their interest is, in this respect, directly opposite to that of the great body of the people.

When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary, over-trading becomes a general error both among great and small dealers.

There seem, however, to be two cases in which it will generally be advantageous to lay some burden upon foreign, for the encouragement of domestic industry. The first is, when some particular sort of industry is necessary for the defence of the country. The defence of Great Britain, for example, depends very much upon the number of its sailors and shipping. The act of navigation, therefore, very properly endeavours to give the sailors and shipping of Great Britain the monopoly of the trade of their own country, in some cases, by absolute prohibitions, and in others by heavy burdens upon the shipping of foreign countries.

Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.

Our greatest stupidities may be very wise.

You talk of Paine with more respect than he deserves: He is utterly incapable of comprehending his subject. He has not even a moderate portion of learning of any kind. He has learnd the instrumental part of literature, a style, and a method of disposing his ideas, without having ever made a previous preparation of Study or thinking-for the use of it. ... [Paine] possesses nothing more than what a man whose audacity makes him careless of logical consequences, and his total want of honour and morality makes indifferent as to political consequences, may very easily write. They indeed who seriously write upon a principle of levelling ought to be answerd by the Magistrate-and not by the Speculatist.

What can only be taught by the rod and with blows will not lead to much good; they will not remain pious any longer than the rod is behind them.

They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice: for I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. 

Deconstruction never had meaning or interest, at least in my eyes, than as a radicalization, that is to say, also within the tradition of a certain Marxism, in a certain spirit of Marxism.