Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.
It is therefore correct to say that the senses do not err — not because they always judge rightly, but because they do not judge at all.
One must look at what impiety hates, what puts it in a rage, what it attacks always, everywhere, and with fury - that will be the truth.
I’m no good for anything except taking the world apart and putting it together again (and I manage the latter less and less frequently).
Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.
Before you come alive, life is nothing; it 's up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning that you choose.
Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. [It is a matter of choice, not chance.] Such is the first principle of existentialism.
A writer who takes political, social or literary positions must act only with the means that are his. These means are the written words.
The law of England has established trial by judge and jury in the conviction that it is the mode best calculated to ascertain the truth.
A poet is the creator of the nation around him, he gives them a world to see and has their souls in his hand to lead them to that world.
Method means that arrangement of subject matter which makes it most effective in use. Never is method something outside of the material.
My father taught me that the question Who made me? cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?
The difficulties which I meet with in order to realize my existence are precisely what awaken and mobilize my activities, my capacities.
He who knows does not feel wonder. It could not be said that God experiences wonder, for God knows in the most absolute and perfect way.
Will is nothing more than a particular case of the general doctrine of association of ideas, and therefore a perfectly mechanical thing.
It may be said that modern Europe with teachers who inform it that its realist instincts are beautiful, acts ill and honors what is ill.
Global terrorism is extreme both in its lack of realistic goals and in its cynical exploitation of the vulnerability of complex systems.
There is no greater stupidity than for people...to marry and so surrender themselves to the small miseries of domestic and private life.
Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary.
The rule of the bourgeois democrats [in pre-federal Germany], from the very first, will carry within it the seeds of its own destruction
Very well then; emancipation from usury and money, that is, from practical, real Judaism, would constitute the emancipation of our time.
No number of sightings of white swans can prove the theory that all swans are white. The sighting of just one black one may disprove it.
The moral decisions of others should be treated with respect, as long as such decisions do not conflict with the principle of tolerance.
Be Content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
The people suffer from famine because of the multitude of taxes consumed by their superiors. It is through this that they suffer famine.
I have desired to do good, but I have not desired to make noise, because I have felt that noise did no good and that good made no noise.
If one avoids haughtiness to the utmost extent and is exceedingly humble, he is termed a saint, and this is the standard of saintliness.
Nature loves nothing solitary, and always reaches out to something, as a support, which ever in the sincerest friend is most delightful.
Laurel crowns cleave to deserts And power to him who power exerts; Hast not thy share? On winged feet, Lo! it rushes thee to meet; . . .
Our emotional life maps our incompleteness: A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger.
A person cannot approach the divine by reaching beyond the human. To become human, is what this individual person, has been created for.
God is like a person who clears his throat while hiding and so gives himself away. God lies in wait for us with nothing so much as love.
When Heaven is about to confer a great office upon you, it first exercises your mind with suffering and your sinews and bones with toil.
Nature, keeping only useless secrets, had placed within reach and in sight of human beings the things it was necessary for them to know.
My religion recognizes no obligation to resolve doubt other than through rational means; and it commands no mere faith in eternal truths
We can always make ourselves liked provided we act likable, but we cannot always make ourselves esteemed, no matter what our merits are.
The history of science alone can keep the physicist from the mad ambitions of dogmatism as well as the despair of pyrrhonian scepticism.
Through fidelity, we situate ourselves and maintain ourselves in the hands of God so exactly as to become one with them in their action.
People are like dirt. They can either nourish you and help you grow as a person or they can stunt your growth and make you wilt and die.
Many men are loved by their enemies, and hated by their friends, and are the friends of their enemies, and the enemies of their friends.
No one knows whether death is really the greatest blessing a man can have, but they fear it is the greatest curse, as if they knew well.
Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.
No trace of slavery ought to mix with the studies of the freeborn man. No study, pursued under compulsion, remains rooted in the memory.
It is as expedient that a wicked man be punished as that a sick man be cured by a physician; for all chastisement is a kind of medicine.
Time on its back bears all things far away - Full many a challenge is wrought by many a day - Shape, fortune, name, and nature all decay
When it comes to consideration of how to do well in running the city, which must proceed entirely through justice and soundness of mind.
Female beauties are as fickle in their faces as in their minds; though casualties should spare them, age brings in a necessity of decay.
Television doomed us to the Family, whose household instrument it has become-what the hearth used to be, flanked by the communal kettle.
This endured absence is nothing more or less than forgetfulness. I am, intermittently, unfaithful. This is the condition of my survival.
Revolutionary tactics cannot be invented by leaders; they must develop spontaneously-history comes first, leaders' consciousness second.