Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Posterity for the philosopher is what the other world is for the religious man.
To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.
We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.
Keep silence for the most part, and speak only when you must, and then briefly.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them.
Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.
What greater reassurance can the weak have than that they are like anyone else?
Secrecy is thus, so to speak, a transition stadium between being and not-being.
I had rather be an oyster than a man, the most stupid and senseless of animals.
To one man a stream is so much water-power, to another a rendezvous for lovers.
Fanaticism consists of redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim.
There is no greater stupidity or meanness than to take uniformity for an ideal.
Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.
To explode a myth is accordingly not to deny the facts but to re-allocate them.
The hammers must be swung in cadence, when more than one is hammering the iron.
The only grandeur of imperialism lies in the nation's losing battle against it.
You see, there is no more purpose or meaning in the world than you put into it.
Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.
If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not recognize it when it arrives.
Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.
You may travel far and wide but never will you find the boundaries of the soul.
Never do today what you can put off until tomorrow. Nothing endures but change.
Behind the aesthetic form lies the repressed harmony of sensuousness and reason
The societal division of labor obtains the dignity of an ontological condition.
Policeman are soldiers who act alone; soldiers are policeman who act in unison.
Statistics began as the systematic study of quantitative facts about the state.
If I remained silent and you remained silent, then who will teach the ignorant?
Patience is the strength of the weak, impatience is the weakness of the strong.
Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.
Life is the faculty of spontaneous activity, the awareness that we have powers.
Physicians think they do a lot for a patient when they give his disease a name.
What is required of a working hypothesis is a fine capacity for discrimination.
Civilization is a hopeless race to discover remedies for the evils it produces.
That which renders life burdensome to us generally arises from the abuse of it.
Childhood is the sleep of reason. [Fr., L'enfance est le sommeil de la raison.]
Every human endeavor, however singular it seems, involves the whole human race.
When we love animals and children too much, we love them at the expense of men.
Originally, poetry creates the myth, while the prose-writer draws its portrait.
Things are entirely what they appear to be and behind them... there is nothing.
Man exists, turns up, appears on the scene and only afterwards, defines himself
All human actions are equivalent... and all are on principle doomed to failure.
If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.
If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.
Schools have ignored the value of experience and chosen to teach by pouring in.
The outstanding problem of the Public is discovery and identification of itself
It is a familiar and significant saying that a problem well put is half-solved.
Clearly when the liberties are left unrestricted they collide with one another.
An intuitionist conception of justice is, one might say, but half a conception.
"Akrasia" [weakness of will] in rational beings is as common as wine in France.
I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized.