Ten thousand do not turn the scale against a single man of worth.

The weakness of little children's limbs is innocent, not their souls.

Heresy is a set of opinions "at variance with established or generally received principles." In this sense, heresy is the price of all originality and innovation.

Never trouble another for what you can do yourself.

The primary meaning of the words "modern," "modernity," with which recent times have baptised themselves, brings out very sharply that feeling of "the height of time" which I am at present analysing. "Modern" is what is "in the fashion, "that is to say, the new fashion or modification which has arisen over against the old traditional fashions used in the past. The word "modern" then expresses a consciousness of a new life, superior to the old one, and at the same time an imperative call to be at the height of one's time. For the "modern" man, not to be "modern" means to fall below the historic level.

In adversity, remember to keep an even mind.

Monarch of earth, I shall confess my secret craft:I've always fought to purify wild flame to light,and kindle whatever light I found to burst in flame.

No man can mortgage his injustice as a pawn for his fidelity.

Mr. Neo-Angular - I am doing my duty. My ethics are based on dogma, not on feeling. Vertue - I know that a rule is to be obeyed because it is a rule and not because it appeals to my feelings at the moment.

Today, tattoos lack symbolic power. All they do is point toward the uniqueness of the bearer. The body is neither a ritual stage nor a surface of projection; rather, it is an advertising space.

No man must encroach upon my province nor I upon his. He may advise me, moderately and without perniciousness, but he must not expect to dictate to me. He may censure me freely and without reserve but he should remember that I am to act by my deliberation and not his. He may exercise a republican boldness in judging, but he must not be peremptory and imperious in prescribing. Force may never be resorted to but, in the most extraordinary and imperious emergency.

I like to think of criticism as the highest intellectual effort that mankind is capable of, and above all, I like to think of self-criticism as the most difficult attainment of an educated man.

For his purposes (and mine), scientific medicine is defined as the set of practices which submit themselves to the ordeal of being tested. Alternative medicine is defined as that set of practices which cannot be tested, refuse to be tested, or consistently fail tests. If a healing technique is demonstrated to have curative properties in properly controlled double-blind trials, it ceases to be alternative. It simply, as Diamond explains, becomes medicine. Conversely, if a technique devised by the President of the Royal College of Physicians consistently fails in double-blind trials, it will cease to be a part of 'orthodox' medicine. Whether it will then become 'alternative' will depend upon whether it is adopted by a sufficiently ambitious quack (there are always sufficiently gullible patients).

It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go. The difference is that you can compel your car to go to a garage, but you cannot compel Hitler to go to a psychiatrist.

A man is a god in ruins.

Remember this, then, that this little compound, thyself, must either be dissolved, or thy poor breath must be extinguished, or be removed and placed elsewhere.

The effects of mescalin or LSD can be, in some respects, far more satisfying than those of alcohol. To begin with, they last longer; they also leave behind no hangover, and leave the mental faculties clear and unimpaired. They stimulate the faculties and produce the ideal ground for a peak experience.

There are moments of sentimental and mystical experience. . . that carry an enormous sense of inner authority and illumination with them when they come. But they come seldom, and they do not come to everyone; and the rest of life makes either no connection with them, or tends to contradict them more than it confirms them. Some persons follow more the voice of the moment in these cases, some prefer to be guided by the average results. Hence the sad discordancy of so many of the spiritual judgments of human beings; a discordancy which will be brought home to us acutely enough before these lectures end.

By 'arguing...' I mean... criticizing... inviting... criticism; and trying to learn from it.

The 'Enlightenment', which discovered the liberties, also invented the disciplines.

In fact, contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.

Pass by us, and forgive us our happiness.

I don't deserve a share in governing a hen-roost, much less a nation. Nor do most people - all the people who believe advertisements, and think in catchwords and spread rumors. The real reason for democracy is just the reverse. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle said that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters.

Though you give no countenance to the complaints of the querulous, yet take care to curb the insolence and ill nature of the injurious. When you observe it yourself, reprove it before the injur'd party: but if the complaint be of something really worth your notice, and prevention another time, then reprove the offender by himself alone, out of sight of him who complain'd and make him go and ask pardon, and make reparation; which ooming thus, as it were from himself, will be the more cheerfully performed, and more kindly receiv'd, the love strenghten'd between them, and a custom of civility grow familiar amongst your children.

"What is truth?" is a fundamental question. But what is it compared to "How to endure life?" And even this one pales beside the next: "How to endure oneself?" - That is the crucial question in which no one is in a position to give us an answer.

And all the time - such is the tragi-comedy of our situation - we continue to clamor for those very qualities we are rendering impossible. You can hardly open a periodical without coming across the statement that what our civilization needs is more "drive", or dynamism, or self-sacrifice, or "creativity". In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.

But how foolish it is to set out one's life, when one is not even owner of the morrow!

I do not think that the dancing and singing of even little children can be explained wholly on the basis of unlearned and unformed responses to then existing objective conditions. Clearly there must be something in the present to evoke happiness. But the act is expressive only a there is in it a unison of something stored from past experience, something therefore generalized, with present conditions. In the case of expressions of happy children the marriage of past values and present incidents takes place easily; there are few obstructions to be overcome, few wounds to heal, few conflicts to resolve. With maturer persons, the reverse is the case. Accordingly the achievement of complete unison is rare; but when it occurs it is so on a deeper level and with a fuller content of meaning. And then, even though after long incubation and after precedent pangs of labor, the final expression may issue with the spontaneity of the cadenced speech or rhythmic movement of happy childhood.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

Fate is not in man but around him.

All human knowledge begins with intuitions, proceeds from thence to concepts, and ends with ideas.

I know. I know that I shall never again meet anything or anybody who will inspire me with passion. You know, it's quite a job starting to love somebody. You have to have energy, generosity, blindness. There is even a moment, in the very beginning, when you have to jump across a precipice: if you think about it you don't do it. I know I'll never jump again.

The earth's sweat, the sea.

Rejoice not in another man's misfortune!

Even pacifist agitation or the nation-wide fever of big sports competitions acts as a spur to war fever in circumstances like ours. Any kind of excitement or emotion contributes to the possibility of dangerous explosions when the feelings of huge populations are kept inflamed even in peacetime for the sake of the advancement of commerce. Headlines mean street sales. It takes emotion to move merchandise. And wars and rumors of wars are the merchandise and also the emotion of the popular press.

We know very well that we are only allowed to go on eating our dinner, to finish seeing the new play, or to enjoy to the end the ball, the Christmas fete, the promenade, the races or, the hunt, thanks to the policeman's revolver or the soldier's rifle, which will shoot down the famished outcast who has been robbed of his share, and who looks round the corner with covetous eyes at our pleasures, ready to interrupt them instantly, were not policeman and soldier there prepared to run up at our first call for help.

Existence is illusory and it is eternal.

Our mass media have little difficulty in selling particular interests as those of all sensible men. The political needs of society become individual needs and aspirations, their satisfaction promotes business and the commonweal, and the whole appeals to be the very embodiment of Reason.

To claim you are more detached, more alien to everything than anyone, and to be merely a fanatic of indifference!

When, in the course of human development, existing institutions prove inadequate to the needs of man, when they serve merely to enslave, rob, and oppress mankind, the people have the eternal right to rebel against, and overthrow, these institutions.

I think so badly of philosophy that I don't like to talk about it. ... I do not want to say anything bad about my dear colleagues, but the profession of teacher of philosophy is a ridiculous one. We don't need a thousand of trained, and badly trained, philosophers - it is very silly. Actually most of them have nothing to say.

As a rule, begin my lectures on Scientific Method by telling my students that scientific method does not exist. ...having been ...the one and only professor of this non-existent subject within the British Commonwealth.

Each to each a looking-glass, Reflects his figure that doth pass. Every wayfarer he meets What himself declared repeats, What himself confessed records, Sentences him in his words; The form is his own corporal form, And his thought the penal worm. Yet shine forever virgin minds, Loved by stars and the purest winds, Which, o'er passion throned sedate, Have not hazarded their state; Disconcert the searching spy, Rendering to a curious eye The durance of a granite ledge To those who gaze from the sea's edge. It is there for benefit; It is there for purging light; There for purifying storms; And its depths reflect all forms; It cannot parley with the mean,- Pure by impure is not seen. For there's no sequestered grot, Lone mountain tarn, or isle forgot, But Justice, journeying in the sphere, Daily stoops to harbour there.

Only at quite rare moments have I felt really glad to be alive. I could not but feel with a sympathy full of regret all the pain that I saw around me, not only that of men but that of the whole creation. From this community of suffering I have never tried to withdraw myself. It seemed to me a matter of course that we should all take our share of the burden of pain which lies upon the world.

O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt.

I believe that the early success and reputation of Carlyle's French Revolution, were considerably accelerated by what I wrote about it in the Review. Immediately on its publication, and before the commonplace critics, all whose rules and modes of judgment it set at defiance, had time to preoccupy the public with their disapproval of it, I wrote and published a review of the book, hailing it as one of those productions of genius which are above all rules, and are a law to themselves.

Alas, the Hero from of old has had to cramp himself into strange shapes: the world knows not well at any time what to do with him, so foreign is his aspect in the world!

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance.