Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.
Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.
The scientific attitude of mind involves a sweeping away of all other desires in the interest of the desire to know.
To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true.
When the journey from means to end is not too long, the means themselves are enjoyed if the end is ardently desired.
The Eugenic Society . . . is perpetually bewailing the fact that wage-earners breed faster than middle-class people.
Nothing is miserable but what is thought so, and contrariwise, every estate is happy if he that bears it be content.
Once the anchor of reason has been cut, ones craft may go anywhere. One may become a St Francis or equally a Hitler.
Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.
Man is born for uprightness. If a man lose his uprightness and yet live, his escape from death is mere good fortune.
Knowledge is merely brilliance in organization of ideas and not wisdom. The truly wise person goes beyond knowledge.
Virtuous people often revenge themselves for the constraints to which they submit by the boredom which they inspire.
The Way is not for, but from, man; if we take the Way as something superhuman, beyond man, this is not the real Way.
The Master said, “If your conduct is determined solely by considerations of profit you will arouse great resentment.
Who expects to be able to go out of a house except by the door? How is it then that no one follows this Way of ours?
There ought to be a robust, uninhibited conversation in black America with different black ideological perspectives.
But it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country.
Sweet exists by convention, bitter by convention, color by convention; but in reality atoms and the void alone exist
In order to shake a hypothesis, it is sometimes not necessary to do anything more than push it as far as it will go.
Criticizing himself again, Sidgwick writes: I am not an original man: and I think less of my own thoughts every day.
If you seek truth you will not seek victory by dishonorable means, and if you find truth you will become invincible.
The wise learn from the experience of others, and the creative know how to make a crumb of experience go a long way.
Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.
It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.
Without a sense of proportion there can be neither good taste nor genuine intelligence, nor perhaps moral integrity.
Obstruction of mobility, where it occurs, is one of the most serious and intractable problems of industrial society.
Flourishing is properly the main human end, and flourishing is activity of soul that succeeds in accord with virtue.
The real cause of personal existence is not the favor of the Almighty, but the sexual love of one's earthly parents.
To lay aside all prejudices, is to lay aside all principles. He who is destitute of principles is governed by whims.
The force of mind is only as great as its expression; its depth only as deep as its power to expand and lose itself.
It is a matter of perfect indifference where a thing originated; the only question is: Is it true in and for itself?
The intensity of vision in the artist and of vividness in his creations are the sole tests of his imaginative power.
There are occasions when the simplest and fewest words surpass in effect all the wealth of rhetorical amplification.
By nature's kindly disposition most questions which it is beyond a man's power to answer do not occur to him at all.
In the dance the boundaries between body and soul are effaced. The body moves itself spiritually, the spirit bodily.
Political Science carries inseparably with it the study of piety, and that he who is not pious cannot be truly wise.
A ruler makes use of the majority and neglects the minority, and so he does not devote himself to virtue but to law.
The art which is grand and yet simple is that which presupposes the greatest elevation both in artist and in public.
This world... ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living Fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out.
[Art] can speak its own language only as long as the images are alive which refuse and refute the established order.
The blindness that opens the eye is not the one that darkens vision. Tears and not sight are the essence of the eye.
All of us have a secret desire to be seen as saints, heroes, martyrs. We are afraid to be children, to be ourselves.
Power always has a direction. It is always downward, towards the weak but power is often confused with what is right
As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State "What does it matter to me?" the State may be given up for lost.
There are times when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character.
The majesty of the Scriptures strikes me with admiration, as the purity of the gospel has its influence on my heart.
If there were a nation of Gods, it would govern itself democratically. A government so perfect is not suited to men.
I never could bear the idea of anyone's expecting something from me. It always made me want to do just the opposite.
This [service to oppressed] is the writer's task, and, if he fulfills it as he should, he acquires no merit from it.
The end justifies the means only when the means used are such as actually bring about the desired and desirable end.