Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.

If there ever are great revolutions there, they will be caused by the presence of the blacks upon American soil. That is to say, it will not be the equality of social conditions but rather their inequality which may give rise thereto.

O world, thou choosest not the better part! It is not wisdom to be only wise, And on the inward vision close the eyes, But it is wisdom to believe the heart. Columbus found a world, and had no chart, Save one that faith deciphered in the skies; To trust the soul's invincible surmise Was all his science and his only art.

...shall we say that the difference between a vegetarian and a cannibal is just a matter of taste?

Those who have been inspired to action by the doctrine of the class war will have acquired the habit of hatred, and will instinctively seek new enemies when the old ones have been vanquished. But in actual fact the psychology of the working man in any of the Western democracies is totally unlike that which is assumed in the Communist Manifesto. He does not by any means feel that he has nothing to lose but his chains, nor indeed is this true. The chains which bind Asia and Africa in subjection to Europe are partly riveted by him. He is himself part of a great system of tyranny and exploitation. Universal freedom would remove, not only his own chains, which are comparatively light, but the far heavier chains which he has helped to fasten upon the subject races of the world.

In a free nation, it matters not whether individuals reason well or ill; it is sufficient that they do reason. Truth arises from the collision and from hence springs liberty, which is a security from the effects of reasoning.

A woman loves to be obeyed at first, although afterwards she finds her pleasure in obeying.

The march, as ever, is toward the future, and he who marches is getting there, even though he march walking backwards. And who knows if that is not the better way!...

At the present day, civilized opinion is a curious mental mixture. The military instincts and ideals are as strong as ever, but they are confronted by reflective criticisms which sorely curb their ancient freedom. Innumerable writers are showing up the bestial side of military service. Pure loot and mastery seem no longer morally allowable motives, and pretexts must be found for attributing them solely to the enemy.

Of practical wisdom these are the three fruits: to deliberate well, to speak to the point, to do what is right.

The notion of rights is linked with the notion of sharing out, of exchange, of measured quantity. It has a commercial flavor, essentially evocative of legal claims and arguments. Rights are always asserted in a tone of contention; and when this tone is adopted, it must rely upon force in the background, or else it will be laughed at.

Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.

Ritual practices ensure that we treat not only other people but also things in beautiful ways, that there is an affinity between us and other people as well as things.

Apart from autograph hunters, I get... many letters from Hindus, beseeching me to adopt some form of mysticism, from young Americans, asking me where I think the line should be drawn in petting, and from Poles, urging me to admit that while all other nationalism may be bad that of Poland is wholly noble. I get letters from engineers who cannot understand Einstein, and from parsons who think that I cannot understand Genesis, from husbands whose wives have deserted them - not (they say) that that would matter, but the wives have taken the furniture with them, and what in these circumstances should an enlightened male do? ...I get letters (concerning whose genuineness I am suspicious) trying to get me to advocate abortion, and I get letters from young mothers asking my opinion of bottle-feeding.

People must be governed in a manner agreeable to their temper and disposition; and men of free character and spirit must be ruled with, at least, some condescension to this spirit and this character.

The Marxist critique is only a critique of capital, a critique coming from the heart of the middle and petit bourgeois classes, for which Marxism has served for a century as a latent ideology.... The Marxist seeks a good use of economy. Marxism is therefore only a limited petit bourgeois critique, one more step in the banalization of life toward the "good use" of the social!

Whenever our neighbour's house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.

I should not be surprized at seeing a French Army conveyed by a British Navy to an attack upon this Kingdom.

The true Gospel has it that we are justified by faith alone, without the deeds of the Law.

We must live, you used to say, as if we were never going to die. - Didn't you know that's how everyone lives, including those obsessed with Death?

In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world.

When reason rules, money is a blessing.

Astronomers... define duration in the following way: time... so defined that Newton's law and that of vis viva [or of the conservation of energy] may be verified. Newton's law is an experimental truth... only approximate... We still have only a definition by approximation.

The institutions of the Ruler are rooted in his own character and conduct, and sufficient attestation of them is given by the masses of the people. He examines them by comparison with those of the three kings, and finds them without mistake. He sets them up before Heaven and Earth, and finds nothing in them contrary to their mode of operation. He presents himself with them before spiritual beings, and no doubts about them arise. He is prepared to wait for the rise of a sage a hundred ages after, and has no misgivings. His presenting himself with his institutions before spiritual beings, without any doubts arising about them, shows that he knows Heaven. His being prepared, without any misgivings, to wait for the rise of a sage a hundred ages after, shows that he knows men.

I think modern educational theorists are inclined to attach too much importance to the negative virtue of not interfering with children, and too little to the positive merit of enjoying their company.

The spirit of a production-centered, commodity-greedy society is such that only the non-conformist can defend himself sufficiently against it. Those who are seriously concerned with love as the only rational answer to the problem of human existence must, then, arrive at the conclusion that important and radical changes in our social structure are necessary, if love is to become a social and not a highly individualistic, marginal phenomenon.

I have ever loved to repose myself, whether sitting or lying, with my heels as high or higher than my head.

In every man sleeps a prophet, and when he wakes there is a little more evil in the world

To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.

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

I have cast fire upon the world, and see, I am guarding it until it blazes.

All things in nature become identical with the phenomena they present when submitted to the practices of our laboratories, whose problems no less than their apparatus express in turn the problems and interests of society as it is. This view may be compared with that of a criminologist maintaining that trustworthy knowledge of a human being can be obtained only by the well-tested and streamlined examining methods applied to a suspect in the hands of the metropolitan police.

The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper.

When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless.

Brothers, love is a teacher; but one must know how to acquire it, for it is hard to acquire, it is dearly bought, it is won slowly by long labour. For we must love not only occasionally, for a moment, but for ever. Everyone can love occasionally, even the wicked can.

There is nothing truly real, save that which feels, suffers, pities, loves and desires, save consciousness. And we need God in order to save consciousness; not in order to think existence, but in order to live it; not in order to know the why and how of it, but in order to feel the wherefore of it.

But now we come to the real paradox: that something as explosive as sexual excitement can nevertheless become a matter of habit, But then that applies to all our pleasures. We discover some new product in the supermarket, and become addicted to it. Then our tastebuds become accustomed to its flavour, and or interest fades. In the same way a honeymoon couple may find an excuse to hurry off to the bedroom half a dozen times a day; but after a month or so sex has taken its place among the many routines of their lives. They still enjoy it, but it no longer has quite the same power to excite the imagination. Sex, like every other pleasure, can become mechanical.

The pint would call the quart a dualist, if you tried to pour the quart into him.

Legal and economic equality are absolutely necessary remedies for the Fall, and protection against cruelty.

The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.

Power is never naked. Rather, it is eloquent.

Between the Shaman of the Tungus, the European prelate who rules church and state, the Voguls, and the Puritans, on the one hand, and the man who listens to his own command of duty, on the other, the difference is not that the former make themselves slaves, while the latter is free, but that the former have their lord outside themselves, while the latter carries his lord in himself, yet at the same time is his own slave.

It is impossible for someone to dispel his fears about the most important matters if he doesn't know the nature of the universe but still gives some credence to myths. So without the study of nature there is no enjoyment of pure pleasure.

Laws are always unstable unless they are founded on the manners of a nation; and manners are the only durable and resisting power in a people.

The importation of gold and silver is not the principal, much less the sole benefit which a nation derives from its foreign trade.

The 'open' mind of the poet and artist can sense realities beyond the reach of our normal senses. The real problem is that our materialistic assumptions have a number of false premises built into them: it is only when we recognize this that we see there is no sharp dividing line between the everyday world and the invisible world of the clairvoyant.