Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
While moral rules may be propounded by authority the fact that these were so propounded would not validate them.
Bertrand Russell would not have wished to be called a saint of any description; but he was a great and good man.
Great nations are never impoverished by private, though they sometimes are by public prodigality and misconduct.
What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it's a drag? But you see, that's what people do.
Enlightenment or awakening is not the creation of a new state of affairs but the recognition of what already is.
I would suggest that today, we know about as much concerning the human mind as we knew about the galaxy in 1300.
At the foundation of moral thinking lie beliefs in statements the truth of which no further reason can be given.
Virtue comes by nature, learning, and practice, and thanks to virtue, all of the aforesaid may deserve approval.
It is the duty of the law-giver to deliver to the many the instructions of whose truth he has persuaded himself.
When people are friends, they have no need of justice, but when they are just, they need friendship in addition.
The ultimate value of life depends upon awareness and the power of contemplation rather than upon mere survival.
With respect to the requirement of art, the probable impossible is always preferable to the improbable possible.
The only stable principle of government is equality according to proportion, and for every man to enjoy his own.
Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.
Truth that is naked is the most beautiful, and the simpler its expression the deeper is the impression it makes.
The cause of laughter is simply the sudden perception of the incongruity between a concept and the real project.
A major difficulty in translation is that a word in one language seldom has a precise equivalent in another one.
If I maintain my silence about my secret it is my prisoner...if I let it slip from my tongue, I am ITS prisoner.
Men will find that they can ... avoid far more easily the perils which beset them on all sides by united action.
Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.
It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.
I can only say that, while my own opinions as to ethics do not satisfy me, other people's satisfy me still less.
A man who believes that he eats his God we do not call mad; yet, a man who says he is Jesus Christ, we call mad.
Tell people - and they may forget... show them - they may remember... but involve them and they will understand.
He who requires much from himself and little from others, will keep himself from being the object of resentment.
When you see a good man, try to emulate his example, and when you see a bad man, search yourself for his faults.
Does Heaven ever speak? The four seasons come and go, and all creatures thrive and grow. Does Heaven ever speak!
You can't lead the people if you don't love the people. You can't save the people if you don't serve the people.
Words have a genealogy and it's easier to trace the evolution of a single word than the evolution of a language.
The enjoyment of freedom which could be exercised without any motivation would be the real hallmark of a maniac.
He used to say that it was better to have one friend of great value than many friends who were good for nothing.
It is compassion rather than the principle of justice which can guard us against being unjust to our fellow men.
It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.
Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.
Religion is not a popular error; it is a great instinctive truth, sensed by the people, expressed by the people.
By ecology we understand the total science of the connections of the organism to the surrounding external world.
Reason teaches us that what is good is good for something, and that what is good for nothing is not good at all.
To an intellectual who is adrift in politics, a theory is an aim; to a true politician his theory is a boundary.
Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.
Ordinary men live among marvels and feel no wonder, grow familiar with objects and learn nothing new about them.
Music is a means of giving form to our inner feelings, without attaching them to events or objects in the world.
Let a man once overcome his selfish terror at his own infinitude, and his infinitude is, in one sense, overcome.
The Divine Light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it.
The aim of totalitarian education has never been to instill convictions but to destroy the capacity to form any.
I cannot escape the objection that there is no state of mind, however simple, that does not change every moment.
It is by disease that health is pleasant; by evil that good is pleasant; by hunger, satiety; by weariness, rest.
Even what those with the greatest reputation for knowing it all claim to understand and defend are but opinions.
Civilization is a progress from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity toward a definite, coherent heterogeneity.
A society that is not willing to demand a life of somebody who has taken somebody else’s life is simply immoral.
Losses of a kind of satisfaction that have no market equivalent don't show up in the calculations of economists.