A person who has been...

A person who has been punished is not thereby simply less inclined to behave in a given way; at best, he learns how to avoid punishment.

It is one of the...

It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.

Teach your tongue to say...

Teach your tongue to say "I do not know" and you will progress.

Don't say things. What you...

Don't say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary.

This book is his bible......

This book is his bible... the distilled wisdom of a lifetime spent contemplating the universe from angles and directions never before suspected.

I hate relativism. I hate...

I hate relativism. I hate relativism more than I hate anything else, excepting, maybe, fiberglass powerboats... surely, surely, no one but a relativist would drive a fiberglass powerboat.

When you close your doors,...

When you close your doors, and make darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not alone; nay, God is within, and your genius is within. And what need have they of light to see what you are doing?

Evil destroyeth itself.

Evil destroyeth itself.

Death is not an event...

Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience death. If we take eternity to mean not infinite temporal duration but timelessness, then eternal life belongs to those who live in the present. Our life has no end in just the way in which our visual field has no limits. (6.4311)

According to liberal political theory,...

According to liberal political theory, as first formulated by John Locke, any individual citizen, oppressed by the rulers of the state, has a right to disobey their commands, break their laws, even rebel and seek to replace the rulers and change the laws.

What strength belongs to every...

What strength belongs to every plant and animal in nature. The tree or the brook has no duplicity, no pretentiousness, no show. It is, with all its might and main, what it is, and makes one and the same impression and effect at all times. All the thoughts of a turtle are turtles, and of a rabbit, rabbits. But a man is broken and dissipated by the giddiness of his will; he does not throw himself into his judgments; his genius leads him one way but 't is likely his trade or politics in quite another.

We have overwhelming evidence that...

We have overwhelming evidence that available information plus analysis does not lead to knowledge. The management science team can properly analyse a situation and present recommendations to the manager, but no change occurs. The situation is so familiar to those of us who try to practice management science that I hardly need to describe the cases.

Whatever you would make habitual,...

Whatever you would make habitual, practice it; and if you would not make a thing habitual, do not practice it, but accustom yourself to something else.

Pythagoras is the founder of...

Pythagoras is the founder of European culture in the Western Mediterranean sphere.

IT is but too true,...

IT is but too true, that for five and twenty centuries since the political and moral sciences have been cultivated, they have done nothing for the happiness of mankind. They have tended only to increase human perversity, to perpetuate indigence, and to reproduce the same evils under different forms. After all their fruitless attempts to ameliorate the social order, there remains to the authors of these sciences only the conviction their utter incompetency. The problem of human happiness is one which they have been wholly unable to solve. Meanwhile a universal restlessness attests that mankind has not attained to the destiny to which nature would lead it, and this restlessness would seem to presage some great event m which shall radically change its social condition. The nations of the earth harassed by misfortune, and so deceived by political empirics, still hope for a better future, and resemble the invalid who looks for a miraculous cure. Nature whispers in the ear of the human race, that for it is reserved a happiness, the means of attaining which are now unknown, and that some marvelous discovery will be made, which will suddenly dispel the darkness that now enshrouds the social world.

This is not for me,...

This is not for me, I want an entirely rural spot.

One should be prepared to...

One should be prepared to receive ninety-nine percent of an enemy's attack and stare death right in the face in order to illumine the Path.

Nature is the best posture-master.

Nature is the best posture-master.

Common to all these enemies...

Common to all these enemies is that none of them accepts the reality of the "whole system": we do not exist in such a system. Furthermore, in the case of morality, religion, and aesthetics, at least a part of our reality reality as human is not "in" any system, and yet it plays a central role in our lives. To me these enemies provide a powerful way of learning about the systems approach, precisely because they enable the rational mind to step outside itself and to observe itself (from the vantage point of the enemies).

Oblivious of Democritus, the unwilling...

Oblivious of Democritus, the unwilling materialists of our day have generally been awkwardly intellectual and quite incapable of laughter. If they have felt anything, they have felt melancholy. Their allegiance and affection were still fixed on those mythical sentimental worlds which they saw to be illusory. The mechanical world they believed in could not please them, in spite of its extent and fertility. Giving rhetorical vent to their spleen and prejudice, they exaggerated nature's meagreness and mathematical dryness. When their imagination was chilled they spoke of nature, most unwarrantably, as dead, and when their judgment was heated they took the next step and called it unreal.

Grief and disappointment give rise...

Grief and disappointment give rise to anger, anger to envy, envy to malice, and malice to grief again, till the whole circle be completed.

Never call yourself a philosopher,...

Never call yourself a philosopher, nor talk a great deal among the unlearned about theorems, but act conformably to them. Thus, at an entertainment, don't talk how persons ought to eat, but eat as you ought. For remember that in this manner Socrates also universally avoided all ostentation. And when persons came to him and desired to be recommended by him to philosophers, he took and recommended them, so well did he bear being overlooked. So that if ever any talk should happen among the unlearned concerning philosophic theorems, be you, for the most part, silent. For there is great danger in immediately throwing out what you have not digested. And, if anyone tells you that you know nothing, and you are not nettled at it, then you may be sure that you have begun your business. For sheep don't throw up the grass to show the shepherds how much they have eaten; but, inwardly digesting their food, they outwardly produce wool and milk. Thus, therefore, do you likewise not show theorems to the unlearned, but the actions produced by them after they have been digested. (46).

Pythagoras was a man; and...

Pythagoras was a man; and with all his imperfections on his head, we shall look among the race of men, for his better, in yain, yea, for his equal, or his second, but in vain. Pythagoras was entirely a Deist, a steady maintainer of the unity of God, and of the eternal obligations of moral virtue. No Christian writings, even to this day, can compete in sublimity and grandeur with what this illustrious philosopher has laid down concerning God, and the end of all our actions; and it is likely, says Bayle, that he would have carried his orthodoxy much farther, had he had the courage to expose himself to martyrdom.

Jesus, in some respects, was...

Jesus, in some respects, was an anarchist, for he had no idea of civil government. That government seems to him purely and simply an abuse.

If God had looked into...

If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of.

Every land which belongs to...

Every land which belongs to God is our land.

The purpose of life is...

The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.

ENGLAND has invited the civilized...

ENGLAND has invited the civilized world to meet in its great commercial centre; asking it, in friendly rivalry, to display for the common advantage of all, those objects which each country derives from the gifts of nature, and on which it confers additional utility by processes of industrial art.This invitation, universally accepted, will bring from every quarter a multitude of people greater than has yet assembled in any western city: these welcome visitors will enjoy more time and opportunity for observation than has ever been afforded on any previous occasion. The statesman and the philosopher, the manufacturer and the merchant, and all enlightened observers of human nature, may avail themselves of the opportunity afforded by their visit to this Diorama of the Peaceful Arts, for taking a more correct view of the industry, the science, the institutions, and the government of this country. One object of these pages is, to suggest to such inquirers the agency of those deeper seated and less obvious causes which can be detected only by lengthened observation, and to supply them with a key to explain many of the otherwise incomprehensible characteristics of England.

Profound skepticism is favorable to...

Profound skepticism is favorable to conventions, because it doubts that the criticism of conventions is any truer than they are.

It is always necessary to...

It is always necessary to call men back to history, which is the first master in politics, or more exactly the only master.

The Christian Religion not only...

The Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: and whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.

We know that he (Pythagoras)...

We know that he (Pythagoras) went to India to be instructed; but the capacity of the learner determines his degree of proficiency, and if Pythagoras on his return had so little knowledge in geometry as to consider the forty-seventh of Euclid as a great discovery, he certainly was entirely incapable of acquiring the Indian method of calculation, through his deficiency of preparatory knowledge… each teacher, or head of sect that drew his knowledge from Indian sources, might conceal his instructions to be reckoned an inventor.

Tyrants would distribute largess, a...

Tyrants would distribute largess, a bushel of wheat, a gallon of wine, and a sesterce: and then everybody would shamelessly cry, “Long live the King!” The fools did not realize that they were merely recovering a portion of their own property, and that their ruler could not have given them what they were receiving without having first taken it from them.

People nowadays think that scientists...

People nowadays think that scientists exist to instruct them, poets, musicians, etc. to give them pleasure. The idea that these have something to teach them — that does not occur to them.

In the interest of scientific...

In the interest of scientific work, more and more formulations in the unified language of unified science are becoming increasingly precise. No term of unified science, however, is free from imprecision, since all terms are based on terms that are essential for protocol statements, whose imprecision must be immediately obvious to everyone.

Truth has no greater enemy...

Truth has no greater enemy than its unwise defenders, and no warmer friends than those who, receiving it in a meek and tolerant spirit, respect the conscientious convictions of others, and seek, in study and in prayer, for the best solution of mysterious and incomprehensible revelations.

But what a perfection of...

But what a perfection of rottenness in a philosophy!

Nothing great has great beginnings.

Nothing great has great beginnings.

A propensity to hope and...

A propensity to hope and joy is real riches: One to fear and sorrow, real poverty.

Schiller writes in a letter...

Schiller writes in a letter [to Goethe, 17 December 1795] of a ‘poetic mood’. I think I know what he means, I think I am familiar with it myself. It is the mood of receptivity to nature and one in which one's thoughts seem as vivid as nature itself.

If on the morrow of...

If on the morrow of the revolution, the masses of the people have only phrases at their service, if they do not recognize, by clear and blinding facts, that the situation has been transformed to their advantage, if the overthrow ends only in a change of persons and forumlae, nothing will have been achieved. … In order that the revolution should be something more than a word, in order that the reaction should not lead us back tomorrow to the situation of yesterday, the conquest of today must be worth the trouble of defending; the poor of yesterday must not be the poor today.

You are devoted to interests...

You are devoted to interests from which it is impossible to gain intelligence or prudence or a proper disposition of reverence toward the gods, but only stupid contention, unbridled ambition, vain grief, senseless joy, and raillery and extravagance.

Bacon's philosophy resembles this religion,...

Bacon's philosophy resembles this religion, which protests continually: it is entirely negative and thinks only to contradict. In indulging himself without measure in this natural inclination, he ends by contradicting himself without perceiving it, and by insulting in others his own most characteristic traits. Thus he blames abstractions without respite, and he makes only abstractions, in always coming back to his middle, general, and most general axioms, and in maintaining that individual instances do not merit the philosopher's attention. He never ceases to shower abuse on the science of words, and he only makes words. He upsets all the received nomenclature to substitute for them new terms, baroque or poetic, or both. With Bacon, neologism is a real disease, and always he believes he has acquired an idea when he has invented a word. He looks with pity at the alchemy that was fully operative in his time, and all his physics is only another alchemy quite babbling and wholly similar to children who talk a lot and produce nothing, as he said very well and very badly with respect to the ancient Greeks.

The role of reason is...

The role of reason is not to make us wise but to reveal our ignorance

He lives in the same...

He lives in the same kind of tense excitement as I do, hardly able to sit still or read a book. He was talking about Beethoven — how a friend described going to Beethoven's door and hearing him 'cursing and howling and singing' over his new fugue; after a whole hour Beethoven at last came to the door, looking as if he had been fighting the devil, and had eaten nothing for 36 hours because his cook and parlour-maid had been away from his rage. That's the sort of man to be.

Has not experience demonstrated quite...

Has not experience demonstrated quite recently that Jack the Ripper performed his exploits under the eye of the London police — a most active force — and that he only left off killing when the population of Whitechapel itself began to give chase to him?And in our every-day relations with our fellow-citizens, do you think that it is really judges, gaolers, and police that hinder anti-social acts from multiplying? The judge, ever ferocious, because he is a maniac of law, the accuser, the informer, the police spy, all those interlopers that live from hand to mouth around the Law Courts, do they not scatter demoralization far and wide into society? Read the trials, glance behind the scenes, push your analysis further than the exterior facade of law courts, and you will come out sickened.

He used to say that...

He used to say that it was better to have one friend of great value than many friends who were good for nothing.

The whole title by which...

The whole title by which you possess your property, is not a title of nature but of a human institution.

We are beginning to see...

We are beginning to see that government by majorities means abandoning all the affairs of the country to the tide-waiters who make up the majorities in the House and in election committees; to those, in a word, who have no pinion of their own.

Another of his sayings was,...

Another of his sayings was, that education was the best viaticum of old age.