Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right, and toleration of movements from the Left.

This right which you have, is not founded any more than his upon any quality or any merit in yourself which renders you worthy of it. Your soul and your body are, of themselves, indifferent to the state of boatman or that of duke; and there is no natural bond that attaches them to one condition rather than to another.

We are no nearer heaven on the top of Mount Cenis than at the bottom of the sea; take the distance with your astrolabe. They debase God even to the carnal knowledge of women, to so many times, and so many generations.

Just acquiring this amount of "education" will not, by itself, make you an educated person, even less will it give you what Oakeshott calls "judgment." But if the manner of instruction is adequate, the student should be able to acquire this much knowledge in a way that combines intellectual openness, critical scrutiny, and logical clarity. If so, learning will not stop when the student leaves the university.

It is terrible to see how a single unclear idea, a single formula without meaning, lurking in a young man's head, will sometimes act like an obstruction ... in an artery, hindering the nutrition of the brain, and condemning its victim to pine away in the fullness of his intellectual vigor and in the midst of intellectual plenty.

Gentleness, as opposed to an irascible temper, greatly contributes to the tranquility and happiness of life, by preserving the mind from perturbation, and arming it against the assaults of calumny and malice.

The first effect of modernism was to make high culture difficult: to surround beauty with a wall of erudition.

There is not a truth existing which I fear or would wish unknown to the whole world.

While moral rules may be propounded by authority the fact that these were so propounded would not validate them.

The specialist is one who never makes small mistakes while moving towards the grand fallacy.

The stars are scattered all over the sky like shimmering tears, there must be great pain in the eye from which they trickled.

But these young scholars who invade our hills, Bold as the engineer who fells the wood, And travelling often in the cut he makes, Love not the flower they pluck, and know it not, And all their botany is Latin names.

The RIGHT OF NATURE, which Writers commonly call Jus Naturale, is the Liberty each man hath, to use his own power, as he will himself, for the preservation of his own Nature; that is to say, of his own Life; and consequently, of doing any thing, which in his own Judgement, and Reason, he shall conceive to be the aptest means thereunto.

Our aim as scientists is objective truth; more truth, more interesting truth, more intelligible truth. We cannot reasonably aim at certainty. Once we realize that human knowledge is fallible, we realize also that we can never be completely certain that we have not made a mistake.

We must be clear that when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images and establishing mental connections.

It is a question whether, when we break a murderer on the wheel, we do not fall into the error a child makes when it hits the chair it has bumped into.

We know in bodies only matter, and we observe the faculty of feeling only in bodies: on what foundation then can we erect an ideal being, disowned by all our knowledge?

We are aware of all the inconveniences of prison, and that it is dangerous when it is not useless. And yet one cannot 'see' how to replace it. It is the detestable solution, which one seems unable to do without.

In spite of the universalistic spirit of the monotheistic Western religions and of the progressive political concepts that are expressed in the idea "that all men are created equal," love for mankind has not become a common experience. Love for mankind is looked upon as an achievement which, at best, follows love for an individual or as an abstract concept to be realized only in the future. But love for man cannot be separated from love for one individual. To love one person productively means to be related to his human core, to him as representing mankind. Love for one individual, in so far as it is divorced from love for man, can refer only to the superficial and to the accidental; of necessity it remains shallow.

Congress itself can punish Alexandria, by repealing the law which made it a town, by discontinuing it as a port of entry or clearance, and perhaps by suppressing it's banks. But I expect all will go off with impunity. If our government ever fails, it will be from this weakness. No government can be maintained without the principle of fear as well as of duty. Good men will obey the last, but bad ones the former only.

Of the twenty-two civilizations that appear in history, nineteen of them collapsed when they reached the moral state the United States is in now. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. All nations have progressed through this sequence:From bondage to spiritual faithFrom spiritual faith to great courageFrom courage to libertyFrom liberty to abundanceFrom abundance to selfishnessFrom selfishness to complacencyFrom complacency to apathyFrom apathy to dependencyFrom dependency back again into bondage.

It is not titles that make men illustrious, but men who make titles illustrious.

Whatever you do, He will make good of it. But not the good He had prepared for you if you had obeyed him.

Tsze-Kung asked Confucius, saying, "Master, are you a sage?" Confucius answered him: "A sage is what I cannot rise to. I learn without satiety, and teach without being tired." Tsze-Kung said: "You learn without satiety: that shows your wisdom. You teach without being tired: that shows your benevolence. Benevolent and wise:- Master, you are a sage."

There is a class of writers who are ever boasting of the progress of civilization and of the human mind in modern times. If we were to credit their pretensions, we should be led to believe that the science of society had reached its highest degree of perfection, because old metaphysical and economic theories have been somewhat refined upon.In answer to their boasts of social progress, it is not sufficient to refer to the deeply-rooted social evils which exist, and which prey upon our boasted civilized social order. We will mention but a single one, the frightful increase of national debts and of taxation.

I would really like to slow down the speed of reading with continual punctuation marks. For I would like to be read slowly. (As I myself read.)

...to the question whether or not the motion of the Earth in space can be made perceptible in terrestrial experiments. We have already remarked... that all attempts of this nature led to a negative result. Before the theory of relativity was put forward, it was difficult to become reconciled to this negative result.

Probability fractions arise from our knowledge and from our ignorance.

It is as if thinking itself had been reduced to the level of industrial processes, subjected to a close schedule-in short, made part and parcel of production.

If you punish him for what he sees you practise yourself, he... will be apt to interpret it the peevishness and arbitrary imperiousness of a father, who, without any ground for it, would deny his son the liberty and pleasure he takes himself.

I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.

Philosophical problems can be compared to locks on safes, which can be opened by dialing a certain word or number, so that no force can open the door until just this word has been hit upon, and once it is hit upon any child can open it.

Pornography completes the deritualization of love.

A distant enemy is always preferable to one at the gate.

Christ is not valued at all unless He be valued above all.

Man desires to praise thee, for he is a part of thy creation; he bears his mortality about with him and carries the evidence of his sin and the proof that thou dost resist the proud. Still he desires to praise thee, this man who is only a small part of thy creation. Thou hast prompted him, that he should delight to praise thee, for thou hast made us for thyself and restless is our heart until it comes to rest in thee.

Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once. One of a series of exchanges when Richard Owen repeated generally repudiated claims about the Gorilla brain in a Royal Institution lecture.

I speak as a biologist. There aren't many absolutely clear distinctions in biology. Mostly what we have is a spectrum. But the male-female divide is exceptional in biology. It really is a true binary.

Let what will be said or done, preserve your sang-froid immovably, and to every obstacle, oppose patience, perseverance, and soothing language.

What potent blood hath modest May!

Even there, in the mines, underground, I may find a human heart in another convict and murderer by my side, and I may make friends with him, for even there one may live and love and suffer. One may thaw and revive a frozen heart in that convict, one may wait upon him for years, and at last bring up from the dark depths a lofty soul, a feeling, suffering creature; one may bring forth an angel, create a hero! There are so many of them, hundreds of them, and we are to blame for them.

Confession should be only in secret before God, who knows everything anyway, and thus it could remain hidden in one's innermost being. But at a dinner and a woman! A dinner-it is not some hidden, remote place, nor is the lighting dim, nor is the mood like that among graves, nor are the listeners silent or invisibly present.

It is the furious longing to give finality to the Universe, to make it conscious and personal, that has brought us to believe in God, to wish that God may exist, to create God, in a word. To create Him, yes! This saying ought not to scandalize even the most devout theist. For to believe in God is, in a certain sense, to create Him, although He first creates us. It is He who is continually creating Himself.

It is only afterward that a new idea seems reasonable. To begin with, it usually seems unreasonable.

Work at these things, practice them, these are the things you ought to desire; they are what will put you on the path of divine virtue - yes, by the one who entrusted our soul with the tetraktys, source of ever-flowing nature. Pray to the gods for success and get to work.

Brief and powerless is Man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.

Instead of water belonging to millions of local communities, water too is to be controlled by five or six global water giants. These are recipes that use economic systems to appropriate for the few the base of survival of the majority.

I think so badly of philosophy that I don't like to talk about it. ... I do not want to say anything bad about my dear colleagues, but the profession of teacher of philosophy is a ridiculous one. We don't need a thousand of trained, and badly trained, philosophers - it is very silly. Actually most of them have nothing to say.