If children were brought into the world by an act of pure reason alone, would the human race continue to exist? Would not a man rather have so much sympathy with the coming generation as to spare it the burden of existence?

I warmly second the advice of the wisest of men-"Don't be ambitious; don't be at all too desirous to success; be loyal and modest." Cut down the proud towering thoughts that you get into you, or see they be pure as well as high. There is a nobler ambition than the gaining of all California would be, or the getting of all the suffrages that are on the planet just now.

The criticism of the reformers was directed not so much at the weakness or cruelty of those in authority, as at a bad economy of power.

To devastate by language, to blow up the word and with it the world.

It is a greatness not of mere body and gigantic bulk, but a rude greatness of soul. There is a sublime uncomplaining melancholy traceable in these old hearts. A great free glance into the very deeps of thought. They seem to have seen, these brave old Northmen, what Meditation has taught all men in all ages, That this world is after all but a show,-a phenomenon or appearance, no real thing. All deep souls see into that,-the Hindoo Mythologist, the German Philosopher,-the Shakspeare, the earnest Thinker, wherever he may be.

And if it is grievous to be doomed one day to cease to be, perhaps it would be more grievous still to go on being always oneself, and no more than oneself, without being able to be at the same time other, without being able to be at the same time everything else, without being able to be all.

What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine - they are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine - they are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior, jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.

"He is a slave." His soul, however, may be that of a freeman. "He is a slave." But shall that stand in his way? Show me a man who is not a slave; one is a slave to lust, another to greed, another to ambition, and all men are slaves to fear.

No longer ask me for my program: isn't breathing one?

Money is human happiness in the abstract: he, then, who is no longer capable of enjoying human happiness in the concrete devotes his heart entirely to money.

What else is the help of medicine than love?

How do we account for the current paranormal vogue in the popular media? Perhaps it has something to do with the millennium - in which case it's depressing to realise that the millennium is still three years away.

But what all the violence of the feudal institutions could never have effected, the silent and insensible operation of foreign commerce and manufactures gradually brought about.

There is but one art, to omit.

There is no man alone, because every man is a Microcosm, and carries the whole world about him.

Human freedom is realised in the adoption of humanity as an end in itself, for the one thing that no-one can be compelled to do by another is to adopt a particular end.

I am convinced that the unwritten knowledge scattered among men of different callings surpasses in quantity and in importance anything we find in books, and that the greater part of our wealth has yet to be recorded.

Being in love is a good thing, but it is not the best thing. There are many things below it, but there are also things above it. You cannot make it the basis of a whole life. It is a noble feeling, but it is still a feeling... Knowledge can last, principles can last, habits can last; but feelings come and go... But, of course, ceasing to be "in love" need not mean ceasing to love. Love in this second sense-love as distinct from "being in love"-is not merely a feeling. It is a deep unity, maintained by the will and deliberately strengthened by habit; reinforced by (in Christian marriages) the grace which both partners ask, and receive, from God... "Being in love" first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

Might is that which makes a thing of anybody who comes under its sway. When exercised to the full, it makes a thing of man in the most literal sense, for it makes him a corpse.

But I say unto you, That whosoever is angry with his brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judgment: and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

What an incitation to hilarity, hearing the word goal while following a funeral procession!

Theology recognizes the contingency of human existence only to derive it from a necessary being, that is, to remove it. Theology makes use of philosophical wonder only for the purpose of motivating an affirmation which ends it. Philosophy, on the other hand, arouses us to what is problematic in our own existence and in that of the world, to such a point that we shall never be cured of searching for a solution.

Multitude is a class concept. ... Class is determined by class struggle. There are, of course, in infinite number of ways that humans can be grouped into classes - hair color, blood type, and so forth - but the classes that matter are those defined by the lines of collective struggle. Race is just as much a political concept as economic class is in this regard. ... Class is a political concept, in short, in that a class is and can only be a collectivity that struggles in common.

Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

The only fence against the world is a thorough knowledge of it, into which a young gentleman should be enter'd by degrees, as he can bear it; and the earlier the better, so he be in safe and skillful hands to guide him.

Understand that all the evils from which you suffer, you yourselves cause by yielding to the suggestions by which emperors, kings, members of parliament, governors, officers, capitalists, priests, authors, artists, and all who need this fraud of patriotism in order to live upon your labour, deceive you!

To turn one's eyes away from Jesus means to turn them to the Law.

Our patriotism comes straight from the Romans. This is why French children are encouraged to seek inspiration for it in Corneille. It is a pagan virtue, if these two words are compatible. The word pagan, when applied to Rome, early possesses the significance charged with horror which the early Christian controversialists gave it. The Romans really were an atheistic and idolatrous people; not idolatrous with regard to images made of stone or bronze, but idolatrous with regard to themselves. It is this idolatry of self which they have bequeathed to us in the form of patriotism.

The remedy for loneliness is human fellowship, the warmth of real, live, flesh-and-blood companions and loved-ones; not prating in a vacuum to an imaginary friend for whose existence there is no vestige of serious evidence. Even an AI robot is better than that. At least ChatGPT exists, really talks back at you, will actually hold a friendly conversation. But talk to the imaginary friend which is God (Allah, Virgin Mary, Lord Krishna, Thor, Zeus, Mithras, name yours) and the only reply you'll get is conjured within your own imagination. You'll be talking to yourself, which is really rather sad, and hardly an antidote to loneliness. No Satisfying Alternative to Religion? Try Reality.

The most important feature of natural selection is that it is a process of drift. Evolution has no end-point or direction, so if the development of society is an evolutionary process it is one that is going nowhere.

Nothing deserves to be undone, doubtless because nothing deserved to be done.

Your Constitution is all sail and no anchor.

All of the new media have enriched our perceptions of language and older media. They are to the man-made environment what species are to biology.

I'm delighted to hear someone make the claim that there is moral progress because it can be such a incendiary thing to say, and its something that I say and deeply believe in.

Every oasis is an island that has water inside it but not round it.

Emptiness empties the one seeing into what is seen.

Persecution of powerless or power-losing groups may not be a very pleasant spectacle, but it does not spring from human meanness alone. What makes men obey or tolerate real power and, on the other hand, hate people who have wealth without power, is the rational instinct that power has a certain function and is of some general use. Even exploitation and oppression still make society work and establish some kind of order. Only wealth without power or aloofness without a policy are felt to be parasitical, useless, revolting, because such conditions cut all the threads which tie men together. Wealth which does not exploit lacks even the relationship which exists between exploiter and exploited; aloofness without policy does not imply even the minimum concern of the oppressor for the oppressed.

Men rush to California and Australia as if the true gold were to be found in that direction; but that is to go to the very opposite extreme to where it lies. They go prospecting farther and farther away from the true lead, and are most unfortunate when they think themselves most successful.

Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them.

How did they meet? By chance, like everybody ... Where did they come from? From the nearest place. Where were they going? Do we know where we are going?

You are in the same manner surrounded with a small circle of persons... full of desire. They demand of you the benefits of desire... You are therefore properly the king of desire. ...equal in this to the greatest kings of the earth... It is desire that constitutes their power; that is, the possession of things that men covet.

No criticism can be brought against a branch of technical science from outside; no thought fitted out with the knowledge of a period and setting its course by definite historical aims could have anything to say to the specialist. Such thought and the critical, dialectical element it communicates to the process of cognition, thereby maintaining conscious connection between that process and historical life, do not exist for empiricism; nor do the associated categories, such as the distinction between essence and appearance, identity in change, and rationality of ends, indeed, the concept of man, of personality, even of society and class taken in the sense that presupposes specific viewpoints and directions of interest.

Man is certainly stark mad; he cannot make a worm, and yet he will be making gods by dozens.

You could read Kant by yourself, if you wanted; but you must share a joke with someone else.

The atheist who affects to reason, and the fanatic who rejects reason, plunge themselves alike into inextricable difficulties. The one perverts the sublime and enlightening study of natural philosophy into a deformity of absurdities by not reasoning to the end. The other loses himself in the obscurity of metaphysical theories, and dishonours the Creator, by treating the study of his works with contempt. The one is a half-rational of whom there is some hope, the other a visionary to whom we must be charitable.

For there's no rood has not a star above it; The cordial quality of pear or plum Ascends as gladly in a single tree, As in broad orchards resonant with bees; And every atom poises for itself, And for the whole.

A new moral outlook is called for in which submission to the powers of nature is replaced by respect for what is best in man. It is where this respect is lacking that scientific technique is dangerous.

It is the principle of antipathy which leads us to speak of offences as deserving punishment. It is the corresponding principle of sympathy which leads us to speak of certain actions as meriting reward. This word merit can only lead to passion and error. It is effects good or bad which we ought alone to consider.