Wherever you encounter truth, look upon it as Christianity.

The reasons for legal intervention in favour of children, apply not less strongly to the case of those unfortunate slaves and victims of the most brutal part of mankind, the lower animals.

The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him. All our other faculties keep us within the realm of the real, of what is already there. The most we can do is to combine things or to break them up. The metaphor alone furnishes an escape; between the real things, it lets emerge imaginary reefs, a crop of floating islands. A strange thing, indeed, the existence in man of this mental activity which substitutes one thing for another - from an urge not so much to get at the first as to get rid of the second.

A real mother, who knows the will of God by experience, will prepare her children also to fulfil it. Such a mother will suffer if she sees her child overfed, effeminate, and dressed-up, for she knows that these things will make it difficult for it to fulfil the will of God which she recognizes.

In any race between human numbers and natural resources, time is against us.

When there is genuine artistry in scientific inquiry and philosophic speculation, a thinker proceeds neither by rule nor yet blindly, but by means of meaning that exist immediately as feelings having qualitative color.

Like strawberry wives, that laid two or three great strawberries at the mouth of their pot, and all the rest were little ones.

Childhood may be defined as the age of play; therefore some children are never young, and some adults are never old.

If we must absolutely mention this state of affairs, I suggest that we call ourselves "absent", that is more proper.

Putin told the Financial Times that liberalism has become an "obsolete" doctrine. While it may be under attack from many quarters today, it is in fact more necessary than ever. It is more necessary because it is fundamentally a means of governing over diversity, and the world is more diverse than it ever has been. Democracy disconnected from liberalism will not protect diversity, because majorities will use their power to repress minorities.

Forty years ago Germany proclaimed the slogan: "Germany above everything. Germany for the Germans, first, last and always. We want peace; therefore we must prepare for war. Only a well armed and thoroughly prepared nation can maintain peace, can command respect, can be sure of its national integrity." And Germany continued to prepare, thereby forcing the other nations to do the same. The terrible European war is only the culminating fruition of the hydra-headed gospel, military preparedness.

The greatest states have been overthrown by the young and sustained and restored by the old. ... Rashness is the product of the budding-time of youth, prudence of the harvest-time of age.

Preference of vice to virtue, a manifest wrong judgment.

The economic concept of value does not occur in antiquity.

In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y; and so on.

Cast your eyes on the journals of parliament. It is for fear of losing the inestimable treasure we have, that I do not venture to game it out of my hands for the vain hope of improving it. I look with filial reverence on the constitution of my country, and never will cut it in pieces, and put it into the kettle of any magician, in order to boil it, with the puddle of their compounds, into youth and vigour. On the contrary, I will drive away such pretenders; I will nurse its venerable age, and with lenient arts extend a parent's breath.

Economic reforms based on the idea of limitless growth in a limited world, can only be maintained by the powerful grabbing the resources of the vulnerable. The resource grab that is essential for "growth" creates a culture of rape-the rape of the earth, of local self-reliant economies, and of women.

Man is born as a freak of nature, being within nature and yet transcending it. He has to find principles of action and decision-making which replace the principles of instincts. He has to have a frame of orientation which permits him to organize a consistent picture of the world as a condition for consistent actions. He has to fight not only against the dangers of dying, starving, and being hurt, but also against another danger which is specifically human: that of becoming insane. In other words, he has to protect himself not only against the danger of losing his life but also against the danger of losing his mind.

Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself.

The most human thing about us is our technology.

Suppose we try to locate the cause of disorder, we shall find it lies in the want of mutual love.

There's nothing like deduction. We've determined everything about our problem but the solution.

Reason now gazes above the realm of the dark but warm feelings as the Alpine peaks do above the clouds. They behold the sun more clearly and distinctly, but they are cold and unfruitful.

I have at last come to the end of the Faerie Queene: and though I say "at last", I almost wish he had lived to write six books more as he had hoped to do - so much have I enjoyed it.

There can be little question that good composition is far less dependent upon acquaintance with its laws, than upon practice and natural aptitude. A clear head, a quick imagination, and a sensitive ear, will go far towards making all rhetorical precepts needless.

When a series of progressive numbers is given as the result of observation, it may generally be reduced to law by combinations of arithmetical and geometrical progressions. A true formula for a progressive series of numbers cannot commonly be obtained from a narrow range of observations.

It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled.

Further, it will not be amiss to distinguish the three kinds and, as it were, grades of ambition in mankind. The first is of those who desire to extend their own power in their native country, a vulgar and degenerate kind. The second is of those who labor to extend the power and dominion of their country among men. This certainly has more dignity, though not less covetousness. But if a man endeavor to establish and extend the power and dominion of the human race itself over the universe, his ambition (if ambition it can be called) is without doubt both a more wholesome and a more noble thing than the other two. Now the empire of man over things depends wholly on the arts and sciences. For we cannot command nature except by obeying her.

In a democratic republic, where the mass of the people of all parties have the same interest at stake, some respect must be had to the feelings and wishes of the minority, especially when that minority is large and clamorous; otherwise, it will be impossible to avoid discord, and discord weakens the bonds of union.

The possession and the exercise of political, and among others of electoral, rights, is one of the chief instruments both of moral and of intellectual training for the popular mind; and all governments must be regarded as extremely imperfect, until every one who is required to obey the laws, has a voice, or the prospect of a voice, in their enactment and administration.

The line that connects the bombing of civilian populations to the mountain removed by strip mining ... to the tortured prisoner seems to run pretty straight. We're living, it seems, in the culmination of a long warfare - warfare against human beings, other creatures and the Earth itself.

...an intellectual concept abstracts from everything sensuous, it is not abstracted from sensuous things, and perhaps would be more correctly called abstracting than abstract. Intellectual concepts it is more cautious, therefore, to call pure ideas, and concepts given only empirically, abstract ideas.

It is unjust that the whole of society should contribute towards an expence of which the benefit is confined to a part of the society.

Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. Consistent intellectualism and spirituality may be socially valuable, up to a point; but they make, gradually, for individual death.

When we make ethical judgments, we must go beyond a personal or sectional point of view and take into account the interests of all those affected, unless we have sound ethical grounds for doing otherwise. (...) The essence of the principle of equal consideration of interests is that we give equal weight in our moral deliberations to the like interests of all those affected by our actions. (...) an interest is an interest, whoever's interest it may be.

The liberty of the whole earth was depending on the issue of the contest, and was ever such a prize won with so little innocent blood? My own affections have been deeply wounded by some of the martyrs to this cause, but rather than it should have failed, I would have seen half the earth desolated. Were there but an Adam & an Eve left in every country, & left free, it would be better than as it now is.

A certain maxim of Logic which I have called Pragmatism has recommended itself to me for diverse reasons and on sundry considerations. Having taken it as my guide for most of my thought, I find that as the years of my knowledge of it lengthen, my sense of the importance of it presses upon me more and more. If it is only true, it is certainly a wonderfully efficient instrument. It is not to philosophy only that it is applicable. I have found it of signal service in every branch of science that I have studied. My want of skill in practical affairs does not prevent me from perceiving the advantage of being well imbued with pragmatism in the conduct of life.

Truly, if the preservation of all mankind, as much as in him lies, were every one's persuasion, as indeed it is every one's duty, and the true principle to regulate our religion, politicks and morality by, the world would be much quieter, and better natur'd than it is.

The devil, depend upon it, can sometimes do a very gentlemanly thing.

Would you really know what philosophy offers to humanity? Philosophy offers counsel.

The life of God - the life which the mind apprehends and enjoys as it rises to the absolute unity of all things - may be described as a play of love with itself; but this idea sinks to an edifying truism, or even to a platitude, when it does not embrace in it the earnestness, the pain, the patience, and labor, involved in the negative aspect of things.

So far as cerebral structure goes... it is clear that Man differs less from the Chimpanzee or the Orang, than these do even from the Monkeys, and that the difference between the brains of the Chimpanzee and of Man is almost insignificant, when compared with that between the Chimpanzee brain and that of a Lemur.

These preachers of beauty, which light the world with their admonishing smile.

The similarity between Christ and Socrates consists essentially in their dissimilarity. Just as philosophy begins with doubt, so also a life that may be called human begins with irony.

A single breaker may recede; but the tide is evidently coming in.

Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.