What is the wisdom of a book compared with the wisdom of an angel?

We must calm the mind of the common man, and tell him to abstain from the words and even the passions which lead to insurrection.

Every sensible man, every honorable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.

When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime to her more than she is to me?

That science is incapable of solving in its own way those fundamental questions is no sufficient reason for slighting them.

Shakespeare wrote better poetry for not knowing too much; Milton, I think, knew too much finally for the good of his poetry.

One does not decide the truth of a thought according to whether it is right-wing or left-wing.

Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense perception...When these ratios change, men change.

They are irreverent to the gods and disobedient to our edicts, lenient as they are. For we allow none of them to be dragged to the altars unwillingly...It is therefore my pleasure to announce and publish to all the people by this edict, that they must not abet the seditions of the clergy...They may hold their meetings, if they wish, and offer prayers according to their established use...and for the future, let all people live in harmony...Men should be taught and won over by reason, not by blows, insults, and corporal punishments. I therefore most earnestly admonish the adherents of the true religion not to injure or insult the Galilaeans in any way...Those who are in the wrong in matters of supreme importance are objects of pity rather than of hate...

Marx explains the alienation of labor as exemplified in, first, the relation of the worker to the product of his labor and, second, the relation of the worker to his own activity. P. 276

I well knew that to propose something which would be called extreme, was the true way not to impede but to facilitate a more moderate experiment.

Let each look to his own heart: let him not keep hatred against his brother for any hard word; on account of earthly contention let him not become earth.

I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their [the sexes'] virtues should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? I must therefore, if I reason consequentially, as strenuously maintain that they must have the same simple direction as that there is a God.

Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.

To all my friends without distinction I am ready to display my opulence: come one, come all; and whosoever likes to take a share is welcome to the wealth that lies within my soul.

Now in all of us, however constituted, but to a degree the greater in proportion as we are intense and sensitive and subject to diversified temptations, and to the greatest possible degree if we are decidedly psychopathic, does the normal evolution of character chiefly consist in the straightening out and unifying of the inner self. The higher and the lower feelings, the useful and the erring impulses, begin by being a comparative chaos within us - they must end by forming a stable system of functions in right subordination. Unhappiness is apt to characterize the period of order-making and struggle.

By committing a crime, a man places himself, of his own accord, outside the chain of eternal obligations which bind every human being to every other one. Punishment alone can weld him back again; fully so, if accompanied by consent on his part; otherwise only partially so. Just as the only way of showing respect for somebody suffering from hunger is to give him something to eat, so the only way of showing respect for somebody who has placed himself outside the law is to reinstate him inside the law by subjecting him to the punishment ordained by law.The need for punishment is not satisfied where, as is generally the case, the penal code is merely a method of exercising pressure through fear.

Another may be more expert in casting [throwing] his opponent; but he is not more social, nor more modest, nor better disciplined to meet all that happens, nor more considerate with respect to the faults of his neighbors.

The best and greatest winning is a true friend; and the greatest loss is the loss of time.

My life was not useless; I gave important truths to the world, and it was only for want of understanding that they were disregarded. I have been ahead of my time.

Children are all foreigners.

Cure the drunkard, heal the insane, mollify the homicide, civilize the Pawnee, but what lessons can be devised for the debaucher of sentiment?

Since a great part of those Learned Men, especially Physicians who have discerned the defects of the vulgar Philosophy, but are not yet come to understand and relish the Corpuscularian, have slid into the Doctrine of the Chymists; and since the Spagyrists are wont to pretend to make out all the Qualities of bodies from the Predominancy of some one of their three Hypostatical Principles, I suppose it may both keep my opinion from appearing too presumptuous, and (which is far more considerable) may make way for the fairer Reception of the Mechanical Hypothesis about Qualities, if I here intimate (though but briefly and in general) some of those defects, that I have observed in Chymists Explications of Qualities.

The problem is that rural America has been a colony, certainly throughout my lifetime. I don't think anybody's paid attention to rural America since about 1945 or '50. Certainly not since 1952, when Eisenhower's Secretary of Agriculture said to the farmers: "Get big or get out." They've just abandoned rural America to corporations and technologies.

Organic life, we are told, has developed gradually from the protozoon to the philosopher, and this development, we are assured, is indubitably an advance. Unfortunately it is the philosopher, not the protozoon, who gives us this assurance.

How just, how suitable to our crime is the punishment with which Providence threatens us? We have enslaved multitudes, and shed much innocent blood in doing it; and now are threatened with the same. And while other evils are confessed, and bewailed, why not this especially, and publicly; than which no other vice, if all others, has brought so much guilt on the land?

A man's reach must exceed his grasp or what's a metaphor?

You must die erect and unyielding.

This is a long book, not only in pages.

I feel like that intellectual but plain-looking lady who was warmly complimented on her beauty. In accepting his Nobel Prize, in December 1950; Russell denied that he had contributed anything in particular to literature.

The theme of Cosmology, which is the basis of all religions, is the story of the dynamic effort of the World passing into everlasting unity, and of the static majesty of God's vision, accomplishing its purpose of completion by absorption of the World's multiplicity of effort.

Behind man lies the abyss, nothingness; the Outsider knows this; it is his business to sink claws of iron into life to grasp it tighter than the indifferent bourgeois, to build, to Will, in spite of the abyss.

Both dreams and myths are important communications from ourselves to ourselves. If we do not understand the language in which they are written, we miss a great deal of what we know and tell ourselves in those hours when we are not busy manipulating the outside world.

The more cunning a man is, the less he suspects that he will be caught in a simple thing. The more cunning a man is, the simpler the trap he must be caught in.

After these matters we ought perhaps next to discuss pleasure. For it is thought to be most intimately connected with our human nature, which is the reason why in educating the young we steer them by the rudders of pleasure and pain; it is thought, too, that to enjoy the things we ought and to hate the things we ought has the greatest bearing on virtue of character. For these things extend right through life, with a weight and power of their own in respect both to virtue and to the happy life, since men choose what is pleasant and avoid what is painful; and such things, it will be thought, we should least of all omit to discuss, especially since they admit of much dispute.

Most kings and priests have been despotic, and all religions have been riddled with superstition.

States as great engines move slowly.

No mathematician can give any meaning to language about matter, force, inertia, used in text-books of mechanics.

There is no sorrow in the world, when we have escaped from the fear of death.

But for my part (Continues Carneades) what my Indignation at this Un-philosophical way of teaching Principles has now extorted from me, is meant chiefly to excuse my self, if I shall hereafter oppose any Particular Opinion or assertion, that some Follower of Paracelsus or any Eminent Artist may pretend not to be his Masters. For, as I told you long since, I am not Oblig'd to examine private mens writings, (which were a Labour as endless as unprofitable) being only engag'd to examine those Opinions about the Tria Prima, which I find those Chymists I have met with to agree in most: And I Doubt not but my Arguments against their Doctrine will be in great part easily enough applicable ev'n to those private Opinions, which they do not so directly and expresly oppose.

Under the rule of a repressive whole, liberty can be made into a powerful instrument of domination. The range of choice open to the individual is not the decisive factor in determining the degree of human freedom, but what can be chosen and what is chosen by the individual.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

Every oasis is an island that has water inside it but not round it.