Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The satisfaction that accompanies good acts is itself not the motivation of the act; satisfaction is not the motive, but only the consequence.
All of those who inhabit the world have a right to be here by virtue of their being here at all. To be here means you have a right to be here.
From a moral point of view, there is no excuse for terrorist acts, regardless of the motive or the situation under which they are carried out.
Arms are instruments of ill omen, not the instruments of the gentleman. When one is compelled to use them, it is best to do so without relish.
Giving birth and nourishing, Bearing yet not possessing, Working yet not taking credit, Leading yet not dominating, This is the Primal Virtue.
The religion of Big Data sets itself the goal of fulfilling man's unattainable desires, but for that very reason ignores her attainable needs.
You could attach prices to thoughts. Some cost a lot, some a little. And how does one pay for thoughts? The answer, I think, is: with courage.
Our Constitution does not profess to have been established simply by the majority, but by 'the people' - the minority as much as the majority.
The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs.
The new media are not ways of relating to us the 'real' world; they are the real world and they reshape what remains of the old world at will.
Huck Finn. Loss of identity drives people to nostalgia. Electronic man has no physical body, so he [Jimmy Carter] puts nostalgia in its place.
Einstein pronounced the doom of continuous or 'rational' space, and the way was made clear for Picasso and the Marx Brothers and Mad magazine.
Philosophers should be, as Seneca put it, 'lawyers for humanity'. Make what you think and feel count; the examined life has global dimensions.
A life of rest and peace in God is good; a life of pain lived in patience is still better; but to have peace in a life of pain is best of all.
From the idea that the self is not given to us, I think there is only one practical consequence: we have to create ourselves as a work of art.
But the guilty person is only one of the targets of punishment. For punishment is directed above all at others, at all the potentially guilty.
The materialist assumption that spiritual substances do not exist is as much an act of faith as the religious belief in the reality of angels.
Think how different human societies would be if they were based on love rather than justice. But no such societies have ever existed on earth.
The alchemist of the West has turned stone into glass But my alchemy has transmuted glass into flint Pharaohs of today have stalked me in vain
One cannot properly appreciate the human realities so long as one labors under the adolescent delusion that people get the fates they deserve.
Utopias now appear much more realizable than one used to think. We are now faced with a different new worry: How to prevent their realization.
Jesus is the only way because the Bible says it to be true. Why? Because only He can bridge the gap between God and man; there's no other way.
And what is the very essence of poetry if it is not this 'metaphorical language'-this marking of the before unapprehended relations of things?
Life must be lived as play, playing certain games, making sacrifices, singing and dancing, and then a man will be able to propitiate the gods.
Seven years of silent inquiry are needful for a man to learn the truth, but fourteen in order to learn how to make it known to his fellow-men.
Never stop working on your statue until the divine glory of virtue shines out on you, until you see self-mastery enthroned upon its holy seat.
Allow not sleep to close your eyes before three times reflecting on Your actions of the day. What deeds Done well, what not, what left undone?
A person has two passions for love and abhorrence. A big disposition to excessiveness has just a love, because it is more ardent and stronger.
Even if I were to suppose that I was dreaming and whatever I saw or imagined was false, yet I could not deny that ideas were truly in my mind.
We approach a condition in which we shall be amoral without the capacity to perceive it and degraded without the means to measure our descent.
The gospel comprises indeed, and unfolds, the whole mystery of mans redemption, as far forth as it is necessary to be known for our salvation.
The culture of a civilization is the art and literature through which it rises to consciousness of itself and defines its vision of the world.
You have no idea how unimportant is all that the teacher says or does not say on the surface, and how important what he himself is as teacher.
Although a man has so well purged his mind that nothing can trouble or deceive him any more, yet he reached his present innocence through sin.
The origin of all mankind was the same; it is only a clear and good conscience that makes a man noble, for that is derived from heaven itself.
The minimum necessary structuring ingredient of every ideology is to distance itself from another ideology, to denounce its other as ideology.
It is possible that a man could live twice as long if he didn't spend the first half of his life acquiring habits that shortens the other half
The hardest task needs the lightest hand or else its completion will not lead to freedom but to a tyranny much worse than the one it replaces.
It is a frightful satire and an epigram on the modern age that the only use it knows for solitude is to make it a punishment, a jail sentence.
The meeting of man and God must always mean a penetration and entry of the divine into the human and a self-immergence of man in the Divinity.
Only a creature that can think symbolically about life can conceive of its own death. Our knowledge of death is part of our knowledge of life.
In our wide world there is but one altogether fatal personage, the dunce,--he that speaks irrationally, that sees not, and yet thinks he sees.
A man's felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.
For naturall Bloud is in like manner made of the fruits of the Earth; and circulating, nourisheth by the way, every Member of the Body of Man.
They that approve a private opinion, call it opinion; but they that dislike it, heresy; and yet heresy signifies no more than private opinion.
I could never understand how someone would embark on their life without having first confronted and clarified the truly fundamental questions.
A person may be greedy, envious, cowardly, cold, ungenerous, unkind, vain, or conceited, but behave perfectly by a monumental act of the will.
The Bible is the only force known to history that has freed enitre nations from corruption while simultaneously giving them political freedom.
The one who thinks over his experiences most, and weaves them into systematic relations with each other, will be the one with the best memory.
I am only a philosopher, and there is only one thing that a philosopher can be relied on to do, and that is, to contradict other philosophers.