The world evades us because it becomes itself again. That stage scenery masked by habit becomes what it is. It withdraws at a distance from us.

In matters of style, swim with the current: in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

The philosophical anthropologist ... can know the wholeness of the person and through it the wholeness of man only when he does not leave his subjectivity out and does not remain an untouched observer.

Friend!-Will the ballot-box raise the Noblest to the chief place; does any sane man deliberately believe such a thing?

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.

The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

Might is a fine thing, and useful for many purposes; for 'one goes further with a handful of might than with a bagful of right'. You long for freedom? You fools! If you took might, freedom would come of itself. See, he who has might 'stands above the law'. How does this prospect taste to you, you 'law-abiding' people? But you have no taste!

As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.

One could count on one's fingers the number of scientists in the entire world who have a general idea of the history and development of their own particular science; there is not one who is really competent as regards sciences other than his own. As science forms an indivisible whole, one may say that there are no longer, strictly speaking, any scientists, but only drudges doing scientific work. . . .

Only the search back to the origins of one's ideas in order to see the real arguments for them, before people became so certain of them that they ceased thinking about them at all, can liberate us. Our study of history has taught us to laugh at the follies of the whole past, the monarchies, oligarchies, theocracies, and aristocracies with the fanaticism for empire or salvation, once taken so seriously. But we have very few tools for seeing ourselves in the same way, as others will see us. Each age always conspires to make its own way of thinking appear to be the only possible or just way, and our age has the least resistance to the triumph of its own way. There is less real presence of respectable alternatives and less knowledge of the titanic intellectual figures who founded our way.

Jacobinism is the revolt of the enterprising talents of a country against its property.

Without consciousness there would, practically speaking, be no world, for the world exists as such only in so far as it is consciously reflected and considered by a psyche. Consciousness is a precondition of being.

We are passengers, comprehended and displaced by metaphor.

The woman is increasingly aware that love alone can give her full stature, just as the man begins to discern that spirit alone can endow his life with its highest meaning. Fundamentally, therefore, both seek a psychic relation to the other, because love needs the spirit, and the spirit love, for their fulfillment.

We refuse to have our conscience bound by any work or law, so that by doing this or that we should be righteous, or leaving this or that undone we should be damned.

As for Hitler, he nourished a fundamental aversion to the monarchy and, as we have noted, his polemic against the Habsburgs, for instance, was of an unparalleled vulgarity. For Hitler, the Volk alone was the principle of legitimacy. He was established as its direct representative and guide, without intermediaries, and it was to follow him unconditionally. No higher princple existed or was tolerated by him. Therefore it is perfectly correct to speak of a consolidated populist dictatorship employing the tools of a single party and the myth of the Volk. Not only the ancient German traditions, but also the very concept of Reich and, as we shall see, the concept of race were brought by Hitler to the level of the masses, which implied their degradation and distorition. Still, in this context they became tools of great power.

I'm prepared to teach acceptance of religion, but, religion has to agree to the social contract. If we have to do it church by church, I'm ready.

I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make.

The refutation of suicide: is it not inelegant to abandon a world which has so willingly put itself at the service of our melancholy?

The human being is not the lord of beings, but the shepherd of Being.

Of war men ask the outcome, not the cause.

The claims of existing social arrangements and of self interest have been duly allowed for. We cannot at the end count them a second time because we do not like the result.

Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.

Man has been trained in the same way as animals. He has become an author, as they became beasts of burden.

We indeed, who are beings of finite powers, are forced to make use of instruments. And the use of an instrument sheweth the agent to be limited by rules of another's prescription, and that he cannot obtain his end but in such a way, and by such conditions. Whence it seems a clear consequence, that the supreme unlimited agent useth no tool or instrument at all. The will of an Omnipotent Spirit is no sooner exerted than executed, without the application of means; which, if they are employed by inferior agents, it is not upon account of any real efficacy that is in them, or necessary aptitude to produce any effect, but merely in compliance with the laws of nature, or those conditions prescribed to them by the First Cause, who is Himself above all limitation or prescription whatsoever.

Movement in direct experience is alteration in the qualities of objects, and space as experienced is an aspect of this qualitative change. Up and down, back and front, to and fro, this side and that- or right and left- here and there, feel differently. The reason they do is that they are not static points in something itself static, but objects in movement, qualitative changes of value. For "back" is short for backwards and front for forwards. So with velocity. Mathematically there are no such things as fast and slow. They mark simply greater and less on a number scale. As experienced they are qualitatively as unlike as noise and silence, heat and cold, black and white. To be forced to wait a long time for an important event to happen is a length very different from that measured by the movements of the hands of a clock. It is something qualitative.

Thus did the Holy Harlots unhinge the brains of man,and when they met and clashed with the pure Mountain Maidens,they raised their white arms high, their armpits smelled of musk,and, as the rites decreed, both fought their verbal war:"God swoops from mountain peeks to eat and play on earth;we are his food and drink and even his sacred toys -and learn, O sterile maids, we are his soft, sweet mates.Let her now leave who fears to merge with her dread God!"The scornful savage mouth of Krino flashed reply:"We will not leave! We guard the innocent soul of man!God is a spirit with pure white wings, a soul that sails,light, disembodied, deep in our thoughts, without embrace.It's we who keep the world in bloom with virgin souls!"

The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction.

He who created us without our help will not save us without our consent.

Men have been released from concentration camps who have taken over the jargon of their jailers and with cold reason and mad consent (the price, as it were, of their survival) tell their story as if it could not have been otherwise than it was, contending that they have not been treated so badly after all.

Knowledge can in part be set aside, and one can then go further in order to collect new; the natural scientist can set aside insects and flowers and then go further, but if the existing person sets aside the decision in existence, it is eo ipso lost, and he is changed.

Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.

The mother principle is that 'governments are republican only in proportion as they embody the will of their people, and execute it.

One can learn such a lot and enjoy such a lot in seventy years, and three generations is a long, long time to see human follies and acquire human wisdom. Anyone who is wise and has lived long enough to witness the changes of fashion and morals and politics through the rise and fall of three generations should be perfectly satisfied to rise from his seat and go away saying, "It was a good show," when the curtain falls.

If I had to lay bets, my bet would be that everything is going to go to hell, but, you know, what else have we got except hope?

In conclusion, I wish to say that my attitude to the whole tragic question is not dictated by my Jewish antecedents. It is motivated by my abhorrence of injustice, and man's inhumanity to man. It is because of this that I have fought all my life for anarchism which alone will do away with the horrors of the capitalist régime and place all races and peoples, including the Jews, on a free and equal basis. Until then I consider it highly inconsistent for socialists and anarchists to discriminate in any shape or form against the Jews.

In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent.

The formula 'two plus two equals five' is not without its attractions.

That I, a funny little gesticulating animal on two legs, should stand beneath the stars and declaim in a passion about my rights - it seems so laughable, so out of all proportion. Much better, like Archimedes, to be killed because of absorption in eternal things... There is a possibility in human minds of something mysterious as the night-wind, deep as the sea, calm as the stars, and strong as Death, a mystic contemplation, the "intellectual love of God." Those who have known it cannot believe in wars any longer, or in any kind of hot struggle. If I could give to others what has come to me in this way, I could make them too feel the futility of fighting. But I do not know how to communicate it: when I speak, they stare, applaud, or smile, but do not understand.

Now just as the historical gives occasion for the contemporary to become a disciple, but only it must be noted through receiving the condition from the God himself, since otherwise we speak Socratically, so the testimony of contemporaries gives occasion for each successor to become a disciple, but only it must be noted through receiving the condition from the God himself.

If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.

All media are extensions of some human faculty -- psychic or physical.

Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought as a fish exists in water; that is, it ceases to breathe anywhere else.

Ours is a problem in which deception has become organized and strong; where truth is poisoned at its source; one in which the skill of the shrewdest brains is devoted to misleading a bewildered people.

It is very strange that men should deny a creator and yet attribute to themselves the power of creating eels.

You have a mind? -Yes. Well, why not use it?

The liturgy of emptiness dispels the capitalist economy of the commodity.

Underneath the superficial self, which pays attention to this and that, there is another self, more really us than I. And if you become aware of that unknown self, the more you become aware of it, the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that there is. That you are a function of this total galaxy, bounded by the Milky Way, and that furthermore, this galaxy is a function of all other galaxies. And that vast thing that you see far off, far off, far off with telescopes, and you look and look and look, one day you are going to wake up and say, why, that's me! And in knowing that, know, you see, that you never die. That you are the eternal thing that comes and goes, that appears now as John Jones, now as Mary Smith, now as Betty Brown, and so it goes forever and ever and ever.

Money is a corporate image depending on society for its institutional status.