Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition and mutual envy of the living.
Which religion gives the greatest joy to God? That which inspires human beings to practice Ahimsa and compassion to all creatures.
We never fully grasp the import of any true statement until we have a clear notion of what the opposite untrue statement would be.
The point is that if there is no God, then objective right and wrong do not exist. As Dostoyevsky said, “All things are permitted.
If the quickness of the mind and the fluency of the tongue are too punctilious and sharp, moderate them in your activity and rest.
True depth of understanding is wide and steady, Shallow understanding is lazy and wandering, Words of wisdom are precise and clear
Arbitrariness and true liberty are as distinct from each other that the empirical nature is distinct from the higher nature of man.
To understand music, you must listen to it. But so long as you are thinking, “I am listening to this music,” you are not listening.
LSD is simply an exploratory instrument like a microscope or telescope, except this one is inside of you instead of outside of you.
We know that from time to time there arise among human beings people who seem to exude love as naturally as the sun gives out heat.
If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.
The importance of these [college] years for an American cannot be overestimated. They are civilization's only chance to get to him.
There is no smallest among the small and no largest among the large, but always something still smaller and something still larger.
There also appears to be another element in the soul, which, though irrational, yet in a manner participates in rational principle.
The self-indulgent man craves for all pleasant things... and is led by his appetite to choose these at the cost of everything else.
The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree.
Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law, and without justice.
Every possession and every happiness is but lent by chance for an uncertain time, and may therefore be demanded back the next hour.
I am often surprised by the cleverness, and now and again by the stupidity, of my dog; and I have similar experiences with mankind.
... that when you're buying books, you're optimistically thinking you're buying the time to read them. (Paraphrase of Schopenhauer)
I saw that all things I feared, and which feared me, had nothing good or bad in them save insofar as the mind was affected by them.
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
Mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.
To choose one sock from each of infinitely many pairs of socks requires the Axiom of Choice, but for shoes the Axiom is not needed.
Nunc fluens facit tempus,nunc stans facit aeternitatum.(The now that passes produces time, the now that remains produces eternity.)
The Copernican revolution brought about by Kant was, I think, the most important single turning point in the history of philosophy.
It is not the failure of others to appreciate your abilities that should trouble you, but rather your failure to appreciate theirs.
You don't begin by dehumanizing those who are dehumanizing you, because it contributes to the cycle of dehumanization in the world.
The paradox of race in America is that our common destiny is more pronounced and imperiled precisely when our divisions are deeper.
I believe that every human being is sufficiently depraved that when we get to Heaven, no one will be able to say, 'I merited this.'
Any person seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity.
It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will always, with the generality of mankind, have preference above the accurate.
The concept of a mental state is primarily the concept of a state of the person apt for bringing about a certain sort of behaviour.
It is raining bombs on the house of the Lord. I go in fear and trembling lest one of these terrible bombers gets into difficulties.
Diogenes said once to a person who was showing him a dial, "It is a very useful thing to save a man from being too late for supper.
I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.
America is still the best country for the common man -- white or black ... if he can't make it here he won't make it anywhere else.
To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him.
Tribalism never prospers, for when it does, everyone will respect it as a true nationalism, and no-one will dare call it tribalism.
Enjoying the dream is more important than interpreting it. Therefore, don't work so hard that it stops being pleasant and exciting.
Since each person, as an individual, is the not-being of the other, it is never possible to eliminate non-understanding completely.
Shakespeare is a good raft whereon to float securely down the stream of time; fasten yourself to that and your immortality is safe.
To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.
It is always from the depths of its impotence that each power center draws its power, hence their extreme maliciousness, and vanity
Photography, if there is photography, is already snapped, already shot, in the very interior of things and for all points of space.
In dealing with those who share his bed, the enlightened ruler may enjoy their beauty but should not listen to their special pleas.
Action, as distinguished from fabrication, is never possible in isolation; to be isolated is to be deprived of the capacity to act.
I used to teach at Yale, which was at one time a center of postmodernist literary theory. Derrida was there. Paul de Man was there.
One of the sources of pride in being a human being is the ability to bear present frustrations in the interests of longer purposes.
To feel keenly the poetry of a morning's roses, one has to have just escaped from the claws of this vulture which we call sickness.