Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
For a punishment to be just it should consist of only such gradations of intensity as suffice to deter men from committing crimes.
Once upon a time people talked about the infallibility of the pope; today it is that of the merchant which they wish to establish.
All the progress we have made in philosophy ... is the result of that methodical skepticism which is the element of human freedom.
If man were immortal he could be perfectly sure of seeing the day when everything in which he had trusted should betray his trust.
One who has accumulated virtue will certainly also possess eloquence; but he who has eloquence doe not necessarily possess virtue.
Patriarchy is a disease and we are in perennial recovery and relapse. So you have to get up every morning and struggle against it.
We must never so thoroughly disrespect someone that they are beyond the pale and, therefore, have no possibility of being changed.
The wonderful thing about the black church for me is that it forces you to come to terms with the centrality of love in the world.
The evil is so ubiquitous in terms of objectification of all of us, that one can say that almost about any TV and even radio show.
Other animals, in a constant and mostly unmediated relation with their sensory surroundings, think with the whole of their bodies.
It's when we start working together that the real healing takes place... it's when we start spilling our sweat, and not our blood.
[priests are] the pretenders to power and dominion, and to a superior sanctity of character, distinct from virtue and good morals.
Lust is a pleasure bought with pains, a delight hatched with disquiet, a content passed with fear, and a sin finished with sorrow.
Be moderate in eating and drinking. Mindful of the passing of time, engage yourself in zazen as though saving your head from fire.
The production of obscurity in Paris compares to the production of motor cars in Detroit in the great period of American industry.
Can't I another's face commend, Or to her virtues be a friend, But instantly your forehead louers, As if her merit lessen'd yours?
Saints cannot arise where there have been no warriors, nor philosophers where a prying beast does not remain hidden in the depths.
The God to whom depth in philosophy bring back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them
Total loyalty is possible only when fidelity is emptied of all concrete content, from which changes of mind might naturally arise.
The trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true.
Boredom is like a pitiless zooming in on the epidermis of time. Every instant is dilated and magnified like the pores of the face.
The friend of time doesn't spend all day saying: 'I haven't got time.' He doesn't fight with time. He accepts it and cherishes it.
For, as I think I have said, I can only meditate when I am walking. When I stop I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs.
The freedom of Mankind does not lie in the fact that can do what we want, but that we do not have to do that which we do not want.
It is unnatural for a majority to rule, for a majority can seldom be organized and united for specific action, and a minority can.
The only moral lesson which is suited for a child--the most important lesson for every time of life--is this: 'Never hurt anybody.
Imagination is not an empirical or superadded power of consciousness, it is the whole of consciousness as it realizes its freedom.
One of the chief motives of artistic creation is certainly the need of feeling that we are essential in relationship to the world.
One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, one dies one's life.
[Stéphane Mallarmé] theory of the hermetic is a mistake, but he can be only difficult to read when he has difficult things to say.
The recent experiences of pocketbooks prove this. I have changed my public since my works have been published in a smaller format.
If I did not publish this autobiography [Les Mots] sooner and in its most radical form, it is because I considered it exaggerated.
If the eye is constantly greeted by harmonious objects, having elegance of form and color, a standard of taste naturally grows up.
Every subject at some phase of its development should possess, what is for the individual concerned with it, an aesthetic quality.
There are infinitely many variations of the initial situation and therefore no doubt indefinitely many theorems of moral geometry.
With equality of experience and of general faculties, a woman usually sees much more than a man of what is immediately before her.
The fatal tendency of mankind to leave off thinking about a thing when it is no longer doubtful is the cause of half their errors.
The tongue may be employed about, and made to serve all the purposes of vice, in tempting and deceiving, in perjury and injustice.
The method of production of the material things of life generally determines the social, political and spiritual currents of life.
The one who does not honor the teacher and the one who does not honor the task, although ever so knowledgeable, they are confused.
. . . learn to value what is important today in the subtle realm rather than what appears desirable tomorrow in the worldly realm.
Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of the self. When we don't see the self as self, what do we have to fear?
We desire to understand the world by giving names to the things we see, but these things are only the effects of something subtle.
The Master doesn't seek fulfillment. For only those who are not full are able to be used which brings the feeling of completeness.
When merit has been achieved, do not take it to yourself; for if you do not take it to yourself, it shall never be taken from you.
Innovators and creative geniuses cannot be reared in schools. They are precisely the men who defy what the school has taught them.
The struggle for freedom is ultimately not resistance to autocrats or oligarchs but resistance to the despotism of public opinion.
If you tried to doubt everything you would not get as far as doubting anything. The game of doubting itself presupposes certainty.
Imagine someone pointing to a place in the iris of a Rembrandt eye and saying, 'The walls of my room should be painted this color.
Every sign by itself seems dead. What gives it life?--In use it is alive. Is life breathed into it there?--Or is the use its life?