Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.

Compared with the life-span of a human being the time-span of a civilization is so vast that a human observer cannot hope to take the measure of its curve unless he is in a position to view it in a distant perspective; and he can only obtain this perspective vis-a-vis some society that is extinct. He can never stand back sufficiently far from the history of the society in which he himself lives and moves and has his being. In other words, to assert of any living society, at any moment in its life, that it is the consummation of human history is to hazard a guess which is intrinsically unsusceptible of immediate verification. When we find that a majority of the members of all societies at all times make this assertion about their own civilizations, it becomes evident that their guesses have really nothing to do with any objective calculation of probabilities but are pure expressions of the egocentric illusion.

Seek, therefore, thyself! But in finding oneself, does not one find one's own nothingness? ...Carlyle answers (Past and Present, book iii, chap. xi.). "The latest Gospel in the world is, Know thy work and do it. Know thyself: long enough has that poor self of thine tormented thee; thou wilt never get to know it, I believe! Think it thy business, this of knowing thyself; thou art an unknowable individual: know what thou canst work at; and work at it, like Hercules. That will be thine better plan." ...and what is my work? - without thinking about myself, is to love God. ...And on the other hand, in loving God in myself, am I not loving myself more than God, am I not loving myself in God?

When superstition is allowed to perform the task of old age in dulling the human temperament, we can say goodbye to all excellence in poetry, in painting, and in music.

And every man, in love or pride, Of his fate is ever wide.

No one is able to rule unless he is also able to be ruled.

The desire to die was my one and only concern; to it I have sacrificed everything, even death.

The game of science is, in principle, without end. He who decides one day that scientific statements do not call for any further test, and that they can be regarded as finally verified, retires from the game.

It is truly a marvelous thing to consider to what greatness Athens arrived in the space of one hundred years after she freed herself from the tyranny of Pisistratus; but, above all, it is even more marvelous to consider the greatness Rome reached when she freed herself from her kings. The reason is easy to understand, for it is the common good and not private gain that makes cities great. Yet, without a doubt, this common good is observed only in republics, for in them everything that promotes it is practised, and however much damage it does to this or that private individual, those who benefit from the said common good are so numerous that they are able to advance in spite of the inclination of the few citizens who are oppressed by it.

On the whole, a man who denies the existence of the effects arranged according to the causes in the question of arts, or whose wisdom cannot understand it, then he has no knowledge of the art of its Maker.

When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.

All those to whom I looked up, were of opinion that the pleasure of sympathy with human beings, and the feelings which made the good of others, and especially of mankind on a large scale, the object of existence, were the greatest and surest sources of happiness. Of the truth of this I was convinced, but to know that a feeling would make me happy if I had it, did not give me the feeling.

People who invented the word charity, and used it in a good sense, inculcated more clearly, and much more efficaciously, the precept, Be charitable, than any pretended legislator or prophet, who should insert such a maxim in his writings.

A whale is not a fish in natural history, but it is a fish in commerce and law. A plea that human laws which mention fish do not apply to whales, would be rejected at once by an intelligent judge.

Times before you, when even the living men were Antiquities; when the living might exceed the dead, and to depart this world, could not be properly said, to go unto the greater number. Dedication

I use the word nursing for want of a better. It has been limited to signify little more than the administration of medicines and the application of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and administration of diet - all at the least expense of vital power to the patient.

To be angry with a man is to hate him; to hate him is to wish him harm; but to wish him well, even if he has done you harm, is the mark of a great mind.

But you must see that if two things are alike, then it is a further question whether the first is copied from the second, or the second from the first, or both from a third.''What would the third be?''Some have thought that all these loves were copies of our love for the Landlord.'

The blood of the heroes is closer to God than the ink of the philosophers and the prayers of the faithful.

Always to have lived with the nostalgia to coincide with something, but not really knowing with what - it is easy to shift from unbelief to belief, or conversely. But what is there to convert to, and what is there to abjure, in a state of chronic lucidity?

The capitalists soon had everything in their hands and nothing remained to the workers.

It is ...easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague.

The degree of one's emotion varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts - the less you know the hotter you get.

The concept of the state presupposes the concept of the political.

Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art an offence unto me: for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men.

Let us remember that the government and the society act and react on each other. Sometimes the government is in advance of the society, and hurries the society forward. So urged, the society gains on the government, comes up with the government, outstrips the government, and begins to insist that the government shall make more speed. If the government is wise, it will yield to that just and natural demand. The great cause of revolutions is this, that, while nations move onward, constitutions stand still. The peculiar happiness of England is that here, through many generations, the constitution has moved onward with the nation.

It is more easy to get a favor from Fortune than to keep it.

Not to feel exasperated, or defeated, or despondent because your days aren't packed with wise and moral actions. But to get back up when you fail, to celebrate behaving like a human--however imperfectly--and fully embrace the pursuit that you've embarked on. (Hays translation) Flinch not, neither give up nor despair, if the achieving of every act in accordance with right principle is not always continuous with thee.

A theory of cultural change is impossible without knowledge of the changing sense ratios effected by various externalizations of our senses.

...wickedness, when you examine it, turns out to be the pursuit of some good in the wrong way. You can be good for the mere sake of goodness: you cannot be bad for the mere sake of badness. You can do a kind action when you are not feeling kind and when it gives you no pleasure, simply because kindness is right; but no one ever did a cruel action simply because cruelty is wrong - only because cruelty was pleasant or useful to him. in other words badness cannot succeed even in being bad in the same way in which goodness is good. Goodness is, so to speak, itself: badness is only spoiled goodness.

Someone despises me. That's their problem. Mine: not to do or say anything despicable. Someone hates me. Their problem. Mine: to be patient and cheerful with everyone, including them.

Mind, even more deadly to empires than to individuals, erodes them, compromises their solidity.

I call this Divine humility because it is a poor thing to strike our colours to God when the ship is going down under us; a poor thing to come to Him as a last resort, to offer up "our own" when it is no longer worth keeping. If God were proud He would hardly have us on such terms: but He is not proud, He stoops to conquer, He will have us even though we have shown that we prefer everything else to Him, and come to Him because there is "nothing better" now to be had.

I have never met a man so ignorant that I could not learn something from him.

The doctrine that all men are, in any sense, or have been, at any time, free and equal, is an utterly baseless fiction.

The two principles on which our conduct towards the Indians should be founded, are justice and fear. After the injuries we have done them, they cannot love us....

I've got a one-dimensional mind.

Human history began with an act of disobedience, and it is not unlikely that it will be terminated by an act of obedience.

When we reflect, that the Inquisition, by its restrictions, and authority, would have prevented the French revolution,-it is hard to say, whether the Sovereign, who, wholly, and without reserve, gave up this instrument, would not, in reality, be doing an injury to humanity.

By capitulating to life, this world has betrayed nothingness. . . . I resign from movement, and from my dreams. Absence! You shall be my sole glory. . . . Let "desire" be forever stricken from the dictionary, and from the soul! I retreat before the dizzying farce of tomorrows. And if I still cling to a few hopes, I have lost forever the faculty of hoping.

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately, by the grace of God. These are grounds of hope for others. For ourselves, let the annual return of this day forever refresh our recollections of these rights, and an undiminished devotion to them.

Sensitiveness without impulse spells decadence, and impulse without sensitiveness spells brutality.

God huddles in a knot in every cell of flesh. When I break a fruit open, this is how every seed is revealed to me. When I speak to men, this what I discern in their thick and muddy brains. God struggles in every thing, his hands flung upward toward the light. What light? Beyond and above every thing!

I feel like that intellectual but plain-looking lady who was warmly complimented on her beauty. In accepting his Nobel Prize, in December 1950; Russell denied that he had contributed anything in particular to literature.

Not the external and physical alone is now managed by machinery, but the internal and spiritual also. Here too nothing follows its spontaneous course, nothing is left to be accomplished by old natural methods. Everything has its cunningly devised implements, its preestablished apparatus; it is not done by hand, but by machinery.