Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Misfortunes, in fine, cannot be avoided; but they may be sweetened, if not overcome, and our lives made happy by philosophy.
Noam Chomsky skittles and skithers all over the political landscape to distract the reader’s attention from the plain truth.
Justice, truth, and beauty are sisters and comrades. With three such beautiful words we have no need to look for any others.
A test of what is real is that it is hard and rough. Joys are found in it, not pleasure. What is pleasant belongs to dreams.
Religion is a form of nourishment. It is difficult to appreciate the flavor and food-value of something one has never eaten.
The villagers seldom leave the village; many scientists have limited and poorly cultivated minds apart from their specialty.
The perfect human being is all human beings put together, it is a collective, it is all of us together that make perfection.
wealth does not bring goodness, but goodness brings wealth and every other blessing, both to the individual and to the state
If I had engaged in politics, O men of Athens, I should have perished long ago, and done no good either to you or to myself.
To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know.
...there is one thing that all Satan's cunning and all the snares of temptation cannot take by surprise - an undivided will.
While doing work if the mind continues to be active let it be so, but there must be at the same time a capacity for silence.
I believe in extraterrestrials, but I believe that real extraterrestrials are so peculiar that the job is to recognize them.
In the absence of good scientific data about the effects of artificial hallucinogens it's good to stick to the natural ones.
The psychedelic viewpoint is becoming more and more legitimate, but psychedelic drugs are not. That's the odd paradox of it.
The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.
The suffering man ought really to consume his own smoke; there is no good in emitting smoke till you have made it into fire.
Fame, we may understand, is no sure test of merit, but only a probability of such; it is an accident, not a property of man.
Consciousness is phenomenologically subjective whenever there is a stable, consciously experienced first-person perspective.
If life is not real, life is not earnest, and the grave is its goal, perhaps it's ridiculous t otake ourselves so seriously.
The universal and absolute law is that natural justice which cannot be written down, but which appeals to the hearts of all.
Unscientific man is beset by a deplorable desire to have been right. The scientist is distinguished by a desire to be right.
A winner's attitude: it may be difficult, but it's possible. A loser's attitude: It may be possible, but it's too difficult.
I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.
Music is a fantastic peacekeeper of the world, it is integral to harmony, and it is a required fundamental of human emotion.
Transmit the established facts; do not transmit words of exaggeration. If you do that, you will probably come out all right.
In the long-run the workman may be as necessary to his master as his master is to him, but the necessity is not so immediate.
Liberal capitalism is not at all the Good of humanity. Quite the contrary; it is the vehicle of savage, destructive nihilism.
You will begin to realize that if you contemplate long enough on the leaf of the flower, that it involves the whole universe.
The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible.
Traditions, when vital, embody continuities of conflict. Indeed when a tradition becomes Burkean, it is always dying or dead.
Atheism is a way of humility. It's to think oneself to be an animal, as we are actually and to allow oneself to become human.
Wise people have an inward sense of what is beautiful, and the highest wisdom is to trust this intuition and be guided by it.
But what is happiness? If we consider what the function of man is, we find that happiness is a virtuous activity of the soul.
Happiness may be defined as good fortune joined to virtue, or a independence, or as a life that is both agreeable and secure.
He who takes his fill of every pleasure ... becomes depraved; while he who avoids all pleasures alike ... becomes insensible.
We, on the other hand, must take for granted that the things that exist by nature are, either all or some of them, in motion.
Genius and madness have something in common: both live in a world that is different from that which exists for everyone else.
The reason domestic pets are so lovable and so helpful to us is because they enjoy, quietly and placidly, the present moment.
Noise is the most impertinent of all forms of interruption. It is not only an interruption, but also a disruption of thought.
If a man wants to read good books, he must make a point of avoiding bad ones; for life is short, and time and energy limited.
Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine.
Patriotism, when it wants to make itself felt in the domain of learning, is a dirty fellow who should be thrown out of doors.
A man is as much affected pleasurably or painfully by the image of a thing past or future as by the image of a thing present.
In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.
If we love something similar to ourselves, we endeavor, as far as we can, to bring it about that it should love us in return.
Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.
We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.