Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
All living souls welcome whatever they are ready to cope with; all else they ignore, or pronounce to be monstrous and wrong, or deny to be possible.
People first feel things without noticing them, then notice them with inner distress and disturbance, and finally reflect on them with a clear mind.
To affirm is not to bear, carry, or harness oneself to that which exists, but on the contrary to unburden, unharness, and set free that which lives.
I have declared infinite worlds to exist beside this our earth. It would not be worthy of God to manifest Himself in less than an infinite universe.
Europe is overpopulated, the world will soon be in the same condition, and if the self-reproduction of man is not rationalized... we shall have war.
Do not despise your situation; in it you must act, suffer, and conquer. From every point on earth we are equally near to heaven and to the infinite.
The existing liberties and the existing gratifications are tied to the requirements of repression: they themselves become instruments of repression.
Non-operational ideas are non-behavioral and subversive. The movement of thought is stopped at barriers which appear as the limits of Reason itself.
When men hire themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking nothing about the justice of their cause, I don't care if they are shot themselves.
Education has for its object to develop the child into a man of well proportioned and harmonious nature-this is alike the aim of parent and teacher.
Only when we realize that there is no eternal, unchanging truth or absolute truth can we arouse in ourselves a sense of intellectual responsibility.
The one who is [truly] imprisoned is the one whose heart is imprisoned from Allah and the captivated one is the one whose desires have enslaved him.
There is a limit where the intellect fails and breaks down, and this limit is where the questions concerning God and freewill and immortality arise.
The light dove, cleaving the air in her free flight, and feeling its resistance, might imagine that its flight would be still easier in empty space.
The case against the notion of historical objectivity is like the case against international law, or international morality; that it does not exist.
The tolerance of the skeptic… accepts the most diverse and indeed the most contradictory opinions, and keeps all his suspicions for the “dogmatist.”
People may come to our communities because they want to serve the poor; they will only stay once they have discovered that they themselves are poor.
A self does not amount to much, but no self is an island; each exists in a fabric of relations that is now more complex and mobile than ever before.
There are two ways of destroying a people. Either condemn them en bloc or force them to repudiate the leaders they adopted. The second is the worse.
So much torture, bloodshed, deceit. You cannot make your young people practice torture twenty-four hours a day and not expect to pay a price for it.
Anything, anything would be better than this agony of mind, this creeping pain that gnaws and fumbles and caresses one and never hurts quite enough.
The acquisition however perfectly of skills is not an end in itself. They are things to be put to use as a contribution to a common and shared life.
Some experiences are mis-educative. Any experience is mis-educative that has the effect of arresting or distorting the growth of further experience.
An undesirable society, in other words, is one which internally and externally sets up barriers to free intercourse and communication of experience.
If there is one conclusion to which human experience unmistakably points it is that democratic ends demand democratic methods for their realization.
The moment philosophy supposes it can find a final and comprehensive solution, it ceases to be inquiry and becomes either apologetics or propaganda.
An excellent man, like precious metal, is in every way invariable; A villain, like the beams of a balance, is always varying, upwards and downwards.
No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought.
if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.
Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion, is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action.
The argument that all Jews have a heartfelt investment in the state of Israel is untrue. Some have a heartfelt investment in corned beef sandwiches.
The modern clercs have created in so-called cultivated society a positive romanticism of harshness. The have also created a romanticism of contempt.
Religion is the opium of the people translated from the German Die Religion ... ist das Opium des Volkessometimes misquoted as opiate of the people.
Yes, expertise puts on in position to have further, cognitive pleasures, but these pleasures are distinct from the sensory pleasure of tasting wines
Instead of being afraid of death, we should try to awake to life; and the only death we should escape from is to forget the presence of God into us.
There is no greater offence than harbouring desires. There is no greater disaster than discontent. There is no greater misfortune than wanting more.
Man first unconsciously and involuntarily creates God in his own image, and after this God consciously and voluntarily creates man in his own image.
Philosophy just puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything.-Since everything lies open to view there is nothing to explain
The only idea they have ever manifested as to what is a government of consent, is this - that it is one to which everybody must consent, or be shot.
For a courageous man cannot die dishonorably, a man who has attained the consulship cannot die before his time, a philosopher cannot die wretchedly.
He takes the greatest ornament from friendship, who takes modesty from it. [Lat., Maximum ornamentum amicitiae tollit, qui ex ea tollit verecudiam.]
Not to be avaricious is money; not to be fond of buying is a revenue; but to be content with our own is the greatest and most certain wealth of all.
The last day does not bring extinction to us, but change of place. [Lat., Supremus ille dies non nostri extinctionem sed commutationem affert loci.]
I am much beholden to old age, which has increased my eagerness for conversation in proportion as it has lessened my appetites of hunger and thirst.
Our predicament is not the difficulty of attaining happiness, but the difficult of avoiding the misery to which the pursuit of happiness exposes us.
Truth is undoubtedly the sort of error that cannot be refuted because it was hardened into an unalterable form in the long baking process of history
Work that is pure toil, done solely for the sake of the money it earns, is also sheer drudgery because it is stultifying rather than self improving.
In the valley of suffering, despair and bitterness are brewed. But there also character is made. The valley of suffering is the vale of soul-making.
God is a reality of spirit He cannot be conceived as an object, not even as the very highest object. God is not to be found in the world of objects.
On a cosmic scale, our life is insignificant, yet this brief period when we appear in the world is the time in which all meaningful questions arise.