When the rich make war, it's the poor that die.

Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.

A good symbol is the best argument and is a missionary to persuade thousands.

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.

In reading Jung's account of his cases, it is impossible not to be aware that his success was due partly to an element of ruthlessness; he was dominated by curiosity rather than compassion.

Tell him to live by yes and no - yes to everything good, no to everything bad.

Capitals accumulate faster than the population; thus wages; thus population; thus grain prices; thus the difficulty of production and hence the exchange values.

Each pursues his private interest and only his private interest; and thereby serves the private interests of all, the general interest, without willing it or knowing it. The real point is not that each individual's pursuit of his private interest promotes the totality of private interests, the general interest. One could just as well deduce from this abstract phrase that each individual reciprocally blocks the assertion of the others' interests, so that, instead of a general affirmation, this war of all against all produces a general negation.

Religious men are and must be heretics now - for we must not pray, except in a "form" of words, made beforehand - or think of God but with a prearranged idea.

The jargon of authenticity ... is a trademark of societalized chosenness, ... sub-language as superior language.

The existential split in man would be unbearable could he not establish a sense of unity within himself and with the natural and human world outside.

To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.

A man's body and the needs of his body are now everywhere treated with a tender indulgence. Is the thinking mind then, to be the only thing that is never to obtain the slightest measure of consideration or protection, to say nothing of respect?

Some will object that the Law is divine and holy. Let it be divine and holy. The Law has no right to tell me that I must be justified by it.

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure...

The prophet is appointed to oppose the king, and even more: history.

They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue, for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another.

Democracy can hardly be expected to flourish in societies where political and economic power is being progressively concentrated and centralized. But the progress of technology has led and is still leading to just such a concentration and centralization of power.

What is patriotism? Is it love of one's birthplace, the place of childhood's recollections and hopes, dreams and aspirations? Is it the place where, in childlike naïveté, we would watch the passing clouds, and wonder why we, too, could not float so swiftly? The place where we would count the milliard glittering stars, terror-stricken lest each one "an eye should be," piercing the very depths of our little souls?

I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.

The Communist Party has one objective: the creation of a socialist economy; and one means: the utilization of the class struggle.

This is probably the fundamental dimension of 'ideology': ideology is not simply a 'false consciousness', an illusory representation of reality, it is rather this reality itself which is already to be conceived as 'ideological' - 'ideological' is a social reality whose very existence implies the non-knowledge of its participants as to its essence -that is, the social effectivity, the very reproduction of which implies that the individuals 'do not know what they are doing'. 'Ideological is not the false consciousness of a (social) being but this being itself in so far as it is supported by "false consciousness"'. Thus we have finally reached the dimension of the symptom, because one of its possible definitions would also be 'a formation whose very consistency implies a certain non-knowledge on the part of the subject': the subject can 'enjoy his symptom' only in so far as its logic escapes him - the measure of the success of its interpretation is precisely its dissolution.

There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another, This conception is a potent menace to social regeneration. All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose; they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical.

Humanity may endure the loss of everything: all its possessions may be torn away without infringing its true dignity; - all but the possibility of improvement.

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

Outside intelligences, exploring the Solar System with true impartiality, would be quite likely to enter the Sun in their records thus: Star X, spectral class G0, 4 planets plus debris.

Human reason is by nature architectonic.

I find that the best virtue I have has in it some tincture of vice.

You're either excluding the right people or including the wrong people.

One should oppose the fascination with Hitler according to which Hitler was, of course, a bad guy, responsible for the death of millions — but he definitely had balls, he pursued with iron will what he wanted. … This point is not only ethically repulsive, but simply wrong: no, Hitler did not ‘have the balls’ to really change things; he did not really act, all his actions were fundamentally reactions, i.e., he acted so that nothing would really change, he stages a big spectacle of Revolution so that the capitalist order could survive.”
In this precise sense of violence, Gandhi was more violent than Hitler: Gandhi’s movement effectively endeavored to interrupt the basic functioning of the British colonial state.

Political ideals must be based upon ideals for the individual life. The aim of politics should be to make the lives of individuals as good as possible.

We swallow greedily any lie that flatters us, but we sip only little by little at a truth we find bitter.

Poets and priests were one in the beginning, and they only separated in later times. But the real poet is always a priest, just as the real priest always remains a poet.

A whole is that which has beginning, middle, and end.

His concept of the anal character as one that has not reached maturity is in fact a sharp criticism of bourgeois society of the nineteenth century, in which the qualities of the anal character constituted the norm for moral behavior.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for co-operation with oneself.

That unwise body, the United Irishmen, have had the folly to represent those Evils as owing to this Country, when in truth its chief guilt is in its total neglect, its utter oblivion, its shameful indifference and its entire ignorance, of Ireland and of every thing that relates to it, and not in any oppressive disposition towards that unknown region.

No more useful inquiry can be proposed than that which seeks to determine the nature and the scope of human knowledge. ... This investigation should be undertaken once at least in his life by anyone who has the slightest regard for truth, since in pursuing it the true instruments of knowledge and the whole method of inquiry come to light. But nothing seems to me more futile than the conduct of those who boldly dispute about the secrets of nature ... without yet having ever asked even whether human reason is adequate to the solution of these problems.

The quality of feeling is the true psychical representative of the first category of the immediate as it is in its immediacy, of the present in its direct positive presentness. Qualities of feeling show myriad-fold variety, far beyond what the psychologists admit. This variety however is in them only insofar as they are compared and gathered into collections. But as they are in their presentness, each is sole and unique; and all the others are absolute nothingness to it - or rather much less than nothingness, for not even a recognition as absent things or as fictions is accorded to them. The first category, then, is Quality of Feeling, or whatever is such as it is positively and regardless of aught else.

"Then those people are right who say that Heaven and Hell are only states of mind?" "Hush," he said sternly. "Do not blaspheme. Hell is a state of mind - ye never said a truer word. And every state of mind, left to itself, every shutting up of the creature within the dungeon of its own mind - is, in the end, Hell. But Heaven is not a state of mind. Heaven is reality itself. All that is fully real is Heavenly."

In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.

Mystery is delightful, but unscientific, since it depends upon ignorance.

No text in the tradition seems as lucid concerning the way in which the political is becoming worldwide. concerning the irreducibility of the technical and the media in the current of the most thinking thought-and this goes beyond the railroad and the newspapers of the time whose powers were analyzed in such an incomparable way in the Manifesto. And few texts have shed so much light on law. international law. and nationalism.

The free being with absolute freedom proposes to itself certain ends. It wills because it wills, and the willing of an object is itself the last ground of such willing. Thus we have previously determined a free being, and any other determination would destroy the conception of an Ego, or of a free being. Now, if it could be so arranged that the willing of an unlawful end would necessarily - in virtue of an always effective law - result in the very reverse of that end, then the unlawful will would always ANNIHILATE ITSELF. A person could not will that end for the very reason because he did will it; his unlawful will would become the ground of its own annihilation, as the will is indeed always its own last ground.

Human beings have faculties more elevated than the animal appetites, and when once made conscious of them, do not regard anything as happiness which does not include their gratification. I do not, indeed, consider the Epicureans to have been by any means faultless in drawing out their scheme of consequences from the utilitarian principle. To do this in any sufficient manner, many Stoic, as well as Christian elements require to be included. But there is no known Epicurean theory of life which does not assign to the pleasures of the intellect, of the feelings and imagination, and of the moral sentiments, a much higher value as pleasures than to those of mere sensation.

There are many difficulties impeding the rapid spread of reasonableness. One of the main difficulties is that it always takes two to make a discussion reasonable. Each of the parties must be ready to learn from the other. You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you.

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.

Aim at being loved without being admired.