Five rules are of absolute necessity, and cannot be dispensed with without essential defect and often without error.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

If there was a God of sorrow, he would grow black heavy wings, to soar not for the skies, but for inferno.

Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can't be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?

Enjoin him to play so many hours every day, and look that he do it; and you shall see he will quickly be sick of it; and willing to leave it. By this means making the recreations you dislike a business to him, he will of himself with delight betake himself to those things you would have him do, especially if they be proposed as rewards for having performed the task in that play which is commanded of him.

So long as a man's power, that is, his capacity to realize what he has in mind, is bound to the goal, to the work, to the calling, it is, considered in itself, neither good nor evil, it is only a suitable or unsuitable instrument. But as soon as this bond with the goal is broken off or loosened, and the man ceases to think of power as the capacity to do something, but thinks of it as a possession, that is, thinks of power in itself, then his power, being cut off and self-satisfied, is evil; it is power withdrawn from responsibility, power which betrays the spirit, power in itself.

In the hours without sleep, each moment is so full and so vacant that it suggests itself as a rival of Time.

Trantor could win even such a war, but perhaps not without paying a price that would make victory only a pleasanter name for defeat.

It is a proof that the state is not an arbitrary invention, but is established by nature and reason, when we actually find that, in places where men have lived together for a time and have become educated, states are erected, although the people in the one such place know not that the same thing has been done in other places. Each people, which does not live in a condition of nature, but has a government, no matter how constituted, has a right to compel its recognition from all adjoining states.

With so many mind-bytes to be downloaded, so many mental codons to be replicated, it is no wonder that child brains are gullible, open to almost any suggestion, vulnerable to subversion, easy prey to Moonies, Scientologists and nuns. Like immune-deficient patients, children are wide open to mental infections that adults might brush off without effort.

If you want to understand the beliefs that are shaping global politics, read the Book of Revelation.

It is not possible to run a course aright when the goal itself has not been rightly placed.

There is no virtue they should be excited to, nor fault they should be kept from, which I do not think they may be convinced of; but it must be by such reasons as their age and understandings are capable of, and those propos'd always in very few and plain words.

While we stop to think, we often miss our opportunity.

The task of power is to transform the always possible 'no' into a 'yes.'

The stock market was created by the telegraph and the telephone, and its panics are engineered by carefully orchestrated stories in the press.

It is only afterward that a new idea seems reasonable. To begin with, it usually seems unreasonable.

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.

But the other conception, namely the infusion of the soul, it is piously and suitably believed, was without any sin, so that while the soul was being infused, she would at the same time be cleansed from original sin and adorned with the gifts of God to receive the holy soul thus infused. And thus, in the very moment in which she began to live, she was without all sin.

"Detect quacks"? Yes do, for Heaven's sake; but know withal the men that are to be trusted! Till we know that, what is all our knowledge; how shall we even so much as "detect"? For the vulpine sharpness, which considers itself to be knowledge, and "detects" in that fashion, is far mistaken. Dupes indeed are many: but, of all dupes, there is none so fatally situated as he who lives in undue terror of being duped.

Credulity in arts and opinions is likewise of two kinds viz., when men give too much belief to arts themselves, or to certain authors in any art. The sciences that sway the imagination more than the reason are principally three viz., astrology, natural magic, and alchemy. Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons that he had left them gold, buried somewhere in his vineyard; while they by digging found no gold, but by turning up the mould about the roots of the vines procured a plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavours to make gold have brought many useful inventions to light.

From the fundamental nature of the Philistine, it follows that, in regard to others, as he has no intellectual but only physical needs, he will seek those who are capable of satisfying the latter not the former. And so of all the demands he makes of others the very smallest will be that of any outstanding intellectual abilities. On the contrary, when he comes across these they will excite his antipathy and even hatred. For here he has a hateful feeling of inferiority and also a dull secret envy which he most carefully attempts to conceal even from himself; but in this way it grows sometimes into a feeling of secret rage and rancour. Therefore it will never occur to him to assess his own esteem and respect in accordance with such qualities, but they will remain exclusively reserved for rank and wealth, power and influence, as being in his eyes the only real advantages to excel in which is also his desire.

Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right.

Our preaching does not stop with the law. That would lead to wounding without binding up, striking down and not healing, killing and not making alive, driving down to hell and not bringing back up, humbling and not exalting. Therefore, we must also preach grace and the promise of forgiveness - this is the means by which faith is awakened and properly taught. Without this word of grace, the law, contrition, penitence, and everything else are done and taught in vain.

Meaning created links so numerous, so rich and involved that only esoteric knowledge could possibly have the necessary key. Objects became so weighed down with attributes, connections and associations that they lost their own original face. Meaning was no longer read in an immediate perception, and accordingly objects ceased to speak directly: between the knowledge that animated the figures of objects and the forms they were transformed into, a divide began to appear, opening the way for a symbolism more often associated with the world of dreams.

The single harmony produced by all the heavenly bodies singing and dancing together springs from one source and ends by achieving one purpose, and has rightly bestowed the name not of "disordered" but of "ordered universe" upon the whole.

Since it cannot be overlooked by the Doctrine of Knowledge that Actual Knowledge does by no means present itself as a Unity, such as is assumed above but as a multiplicity, there is consequently a second task imposed upon it, - that of setting forth the ground of this apparent Multiplicity. It is of course understood that this ground is not to be derived from any outward source, but must be shown to be contained in the essential Nature of Knowledge itself as such; - and that therefore this problem, although apparently two-fold, is yet but one and the same, - namely, to set forth the essential Nature of Knowledge.

The poor man is ruined as soon as he begins to ape the rich.

But in the days that are now passing over us, even fools are arrested to ask the meaning of them; few of the generations of men have seen more impressive days. Days of endless calamity, disruption, dislocation, confusion worse confounded: if they are not days of endless hope too, then they are days of utter despair. For it is not a small hope that will suffice, the ruin being clearly, either in action or in prospect, universal. There must be a new world, if there is to be any world at all!

No one, of a surety, wanders farther from the mark than he who fancies to himself that he already understands this marvellous Kingdom, and can, in few words, fathom its constitution, and everywhere find the right path. To no one, who has broken off, and made himself an Island, will insight rise of itself, nor even without toilsome effort. Only to children, or childlike men, who know not what they do, can this happen. Long, unwearied intercourse, free and wise Contemplation, attention to faint tokens and indications; an inward poet-life, practised senses, a simple and devout spirit: these are the essential requisites of a true Friend of Nature; without these no one can attain his wish.

The happiness and unhappiness of the rational, social animal depends not on what he feels but on what he does; just as his virtue and vice consist not in feeling but in doing.

Whoever has used what means he is capable of, for the informing of himself, with a readiness to believe and obey what shall be taught and prescribed by Jesus, his Lord and King, is a true and faithful subject of Christ's kingdom; and cannot be thought to fail in any thing necessary to salvation.

It seems not absurd to conceive, that at first production of mixt bodies, the universal matter, whereof they among other parts of the universe consisted, was actually divided, into little particles, of several sizes and shapes, variously moved.

Many who have not learned wisdom live wisely, and many who do the basest deeds can make most learned speeches.

The bourgeoisie is defined as the social class which does not want to be named.

A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.

Tis only from the selfishness and confin'd generosity of men, along with the scanty provision nature has made for his wants, that justice derives its origin.

From all these indignities, such as the very beasts of the field would not endure, you can deliver yourselves if you try, not by taking action, but merely by willing to be free.

Suicide evokes revulsion with horror, because everything in nature seeks to preserve itself: a damaged tree, a living body, an animal; and in man, then, is freedom, which is the highest degree of life, and constitutes the worth of it, to become now a principium for self-destruction? This is the most horrifying thing imaginable. For anyone who has already got so far as to be master, at any time, over his own life, is also master over the life of anyone else; for him, the door stands open to every crime, and before he can be seized he is ready to spirit himself away out of the world. So suicide evokes horror, in that a man thereby puts himself below the beasts. We regard a suicide as a carcase, whereas we feel pity for one who meets his end through fate.

Strange incongruities must ever perplex those, who confound the unhappiness of civil dissensions with the crime of treason.

It might otherwise appear paradoxical that money can be replaced by worthless paper; but that the slightest alloying of its metallic content depreciates it.

Silent listening unites a people and creates community without communication.

For human beings, the measure of every action is the impression of the senses.

There can be no higher law in journalism than to tell the truth and shame the devil.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

The revolution, Stahl declared, is the 'world-historic mark of our age.' It would found 'the entire State on the will of man instead of on the commandment and ordinance of God.'

Art is not the possession of the few who are recognized writers, painters, musicians; it is the authentic expression of any and all individuality. Those who have the gift of creative expression in unusually large measure disclose the meaning of the individuality of others to those others. In participating in the work of art, they become artists in their activity. They learn to know and honor individuality in whatever form it appears. The fountains of creative activity are discovered and released. The free individuality which is the source of art is also the final source of creative development in time.