A large plural society cannot be governed without recognizing that, transcending its plural interests, there is a rational order with a superior common law.

What can a man say about woman, his own opposite? I mean of course something sensible, that is outside the sexual program, free of resentment, illusion, and theory. Where is the man to be found capable of such superiority? Woman always stands just where the man's shadow falls, so that he is only too liable to confuse the two. Then, when he tries to repair this misunderstanding, he overvalues her and believes her the most desirable thing in the world.

Vague a l'ame - melancholy yearning for the end of the world.

There is no man so good that if he placed all his actions and thoughts under the scrutiny of the laws, he would not deserve hanging ten times in his life.

Concentrate every minute like a Roman-like a man-on doing what's in front of you with precise and genuine seriousness, tenderly, willingly, with justice. And on freeing yourself from all other distractions.

The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That - with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success - is our national disease.

The discourse of truth is quite simply impossible. It eludes itself. Everything eludes itself, everything scoffs at its own truth, seduction renders everything elusive. The fury to unveil the truth, to get at the naked truth, the one which haunts all discourses of interpretation, the obscene rage to uncover the secret, is proportionate to the impossibility of ever achieving this. ...But this rage, this fury, only bears witness to the eternity of seduction and to the impossibility of mastering it.

Nothing deserves to be undone, doubtless because nothing deserved to be done.

The premonition of madness is complicated by the fear of lucidity in madness, the fear of the moments of return and reunion, when the intuition of disaster is so painful that it almost provokes a greater madness. One would welcome chaos if one were not afraid of lights in it.

There are no passengers on Spaceship Earth. We are all crew.

The fake love of ressentiment man offers no real help, since for his perverted sense of values, evils like "sickness" and "poverty" have become goods.

Doth perfect beauty stand in need of praise at all? Nay; no more than law, no more than truth, no more than loving kindness, nor than modesty.

By far my greatest dread in life [...] is that (some variant of) the Everett interpretation of Quantum Mechanics is true. Dave's Diary, BLTC Research, May 1996

The major and almost only theme of all my work is the struggle of man with "God": the unyielding, inextinguishable struggle of the naked worm called "man" against the terrifying power and darkness of the forces within him and around him.

There are three juridical attributes that inseparably belong to the citizen by right. These are: Constitutional freedom, as the right of every citizen to have to obey no other law than that to which he has given his consent or approval; Civil equality, as the right of the citizen to recognize no one as a superior among the people in relation to himself...; and Political independence, as the right to owe his existence and continuance in society not to the arbitrary will of another, but to his own rights and powers as a member of the commonwealth.

And what is it in us that is mellowed by civilization? All it does, I'd say, is to develop in man a capacity to feel a greater variety of sensations. And nothing, absolutely nothing else. And through this development, man will yet learn how to enjoy bloodshed. Why, it has already happened....Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty.

The first discipline modernity's originators imposed upon themselves was that of self-restraint, learning to live with vulgarity. Their high expectations for effectiveness were made possible by low expectations of what was to be.

A world without delight and without affection is a world destitute of value.

Anything can be made to look good or bad by being redescribed.

Small farms make economic sense. They also produce more happiness, more beauty, more health-those things that aren't so quantifiable...

By the removal of the unnecessary mouths, and by extracting from the farmer the full value of the farm, a greater surplus, or what is the same thing, the price of a greater surplus, was obtained for the proprietor...

If...we look at the essential characteristics of the Whig and the Tory, we may consider each of them as the representative of a great principle, essential to the welfare of nations. One is, in an especial manner, the guardian of liberty, and the other, of order. One is the moving power, and the other the steadying power of the state. One is the sail, without which society would make no progress, the other the ballast, without which there would be small safety in a tempest.

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 young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.

If life is all subjective, why not be subjectively happy rather than subjectively sad?

There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.

To what purpose, pray, exist all these things that be born? Whence come male and female? Whence the difference in kind of all things that be, amongst visible species, unless there be certain pre-existing and previously established Reasons and Causes subsisting beforehand, in the nature of a pattern? With regard to which, though we are dull of sight, yet let us strive to clear away the mist from the eyes of the soul.

The true, prescriptive artist strives after artistic truth; the lawless artist, following blind instinct, after an appearance of naturalness. The one leads to the highest peaks of art, the other to its lowest depths.

Man is forming thousands of ridiculous relations between himself and God.

I once had a conversation with a famous French philosopher who's a friend of mine. And I said to him, "Why the hell do you write so badly? Pourquoi tu écris si mal?" ... And this was Michel Foucault. He was a very smart guy and wrote a lot of very good stuff but in general he just wrote badly. When you heard him give a lecture in Berkeley, it was perfectly clear, just as clear as I am. ... And he said, "Well, in France, it would be regarded as somewhat childish and naive if you wrote clearly. ... In France you've got to have 10% incomprehensible."

There never was a bad man that had ability for good service.

For as children tremble and fear everything in the blind darkness, so we in the light sometimes fear what is no more to be feared than the things that children in the dark hold in terror and imagine will come true. This terror, therefore, and darkness of mind must be dispelled not by the rays of the sun and glittering shafts of daylight, but by the aspect and law of nature.

World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.

A good opening and a good ending make for a good film provided they come close together.

Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them. (KJV) 9:55-56 Rebuking James and John for asking if he would command fire to come down from heaven, to consume a village of Samaritans for not receiving them, because they seemed to be headed for Jerusalem.

I find that the best goodness I have has some tincture of vice.

The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it.

Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more intensely the mind of thought is drawn to them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

The steady drip of water causes stone to hollow and yield.

These Lectures, conjoined with those which have already appeared under the titles of "The Characteristics of the Present Age," and "The Nature of the Scholar," in the latter of which the tone of thought that governs the present course is applied to a particular subject, form a complete scheme of popular instruction, of which the present work exhibits the highest and clearest summit; and, taken together, they are the result of a process of self-culture, unceasingly pursued during the last six or seven years of my life, with greater leisure and in riper maturity, by means of that Philosophy in which I have been a partaker for thirteen years, and which, although, I hope, it has changed many things in me, has nevertheless itself suffered no change whatever during that period.