Even when labor is subjugated by capital it always necessarily maintains its own autonomy, and this ever more clearly true today with respect to the new immaterial, cooperative and collaborative forms of labor. This relationship is not isolated to the economic terrain but, as we will argue later, spills over into the biopolitical terrain of society as a hole, including military conflicts. In any case, we should recognize here that even in asymmetrical conflicts victory in terms of complete domination is not possible. All that can be achieved is a provisional and limited maintenance of control and order that must constantly be policed and preserved. Counterinsurgency is a full-time job.

On the more conservative side... Liberalism has been associated with... the right to own private property... one of the most fundamental individual rights that is protected in true liberal societies, and that right is... what made possible the modern economic world. As any economist would tell you, without secure property rights and contract enforcement, you don't get investment and therefore economic growth.

And in a flash I understood the meaning of sex. It is a craving for the mingling of consciousness, whose symbol is the mingling of bodies. Every time a man and a woman slake their thirst in the strange waters of the other's identity, they glimpse the immensity of their freedom.

God can make good use of all that happens, but the loss is real.

What each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed.

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 man who makes his religion a means to the gaining of this world, will lose both worlds alike; whereas the man who gives up this world for the sake of religion, will get both worlds alike.

A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his cause. If we seek the liberation of the people by means of a lie, we will surely grow confused, go astray, and lose sight of our objective, and if we have any influence at all on the people we will lead them astray as well - in other words, we will be acting in the spirit of reaction and to its benefit.

Where children are, there is a golden age.

Nature consists of the elements given by the senses. Primitive man first takes out of them certain complexes of these elements that present themselves with a certain stability and are most important to him. The first and oldest words are names for "things". ... The sensations are no "symbols of things". On the contrary the "thing" is a mental symbol for a sensation-complex of relative stability. Not the things, the bodies, but colours, sounds, pressures, times (what we usually call sensations) are the true elements of the world.

All those of you who rejoice in peace, now it is time to judge the truth....Undoubtedly in days gone by there were holy men as Scripture tells,For God stated that he left behind seven thousand men in safety,And there are many priests and kings who are righteous under the law,There you find so many of the prophets, and many of the people too.Tell me which of the righteous of that time claimed an altar for himself?That wicked nation perpetrated a very large number of crimes,They sacrificed to idols and may prophets were put to death,Yet not a single one of the righteous withdrew from unity.The righteous endured the unrighteous while waiting for the winnower:They all mingled in one temple but were not mingled in their hearts;They said such things against them yet they had a single altar.

A fire eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself.

The only roads of enquiry there are to think of: one, that it is and that it is not possible for it not to be, this is the path of persuasion (for truth is its companion); the other, that it is not and that it must not be - this I say to you is a path wholly unknowable.

Not because Socrates said so,... I look upon all men as my compatriots.

As we passed under the last bridge over the canal, just before reaching the Merrimack, the people coming out of church paused to look at us from above, and apparently, so strong is custom, indulged in some heathenish comparisons; but we were the truest observers of this sunny day.

I respect orders but I respect myself too and I do not obey foolish rules made especially to humiliate me.

That of beaver skins, of beaver wool, and of gum Senega, has been subjected to higher duties; Great Britain, by the conquest of Canada and Senegal, having got almost the monopoly of those commodities.

If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.

I can be twenty women, one hundred, if that's what you want, all women. Ride with me behind you, I weigh nothing, your horse will not feel me. I want to be your whorehouse!

I assert once again as a truth to which history as a whole bears witness that men may second their fortune, but cannot oppose it; that they may weave its warp, but cannot break it. Yet they should never give up, because there is always hope, though they know not the end and more towards it along roads which cross one another and as yet are unexplored; and since there is hope, they should not despair, no matter what fortune brings or in what travail they find themselves.

Standing on the bare ground, - my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space, - all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.

The 'intense life' advertised by the neoliberal regime is in truth simply a life of intense consumption.

Today, to live means merely to produce.

Ancient histories, as one of our wits has said, are but fables that have been agreed upon.

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change, and to preserve change amid order.

I regard you with an indifference closely bordering on aversion.

Citizens of a Jeffersonian democracy can be as religious or irreligious as they please as long as they are not "fanatical." That is, they must abandon or modify opinion on matters of ultimate importance, the opinions that may hitherto have given sense and point to their lives, if these opinions entail public actions that cannot be justified to most of their fellow citizens.

To a lesser degree, a secret ressentiment underlies every way of thinking which attributes creative power to mere negation and criticism. Thus modern philosophy is deeply penetrated by a whole type of thinking which is nourished by ressentiment. I am referring to the view that the "true" and the "given" is not that which is self-evident, but rather that which is "indubitable" or "incontestable," which can be maintained against doubt and criticism.

By reducing any quality to quantity, myth economizes intelligence: it understands reality more cheaply.

While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth- that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together....

Religious minds, which are distrustful of philosophic dogmas, fall into the error - inculcated by philosophy - of supposing that Providence is limited in its action; that is does not extend to the social world or the social relations of mankind, and that God has not determined upon any plan of social organization for the regulation of those relations. If they had a PROFOUND FAITH IN THE UNIVERSALITY OF PROVIDENCE, they would be convinced that all human needs must have been foreseen and provided for, and especially that the most urgent of them all could not have been overlooked - namely, the need of a social order for the regulation of our industrial and social relations.

All things are artificial, for nature is the Art of God.

Without the aid of trained emotions the intellect is powerless against the animal organism. I had sooner play cards against a man who was quite skeptical about ethics, but bred to believe that 'a gentleman does not cheat,' than against an irreproachable moral philosopher who had been brought up among sharpers. In battle it is not syllogisms that will keep the reluctant nerves and muscles to their post in the third hour of the bombardment.

Without the interplay of human against human, the chief interest in life is gone; most of the intellectual values are gone; most of the reason for living is gone.

Let's put a limit to the scramble for money. ... Having got what you wanted, you ought to begin to bring that struggle to an end.

The "I" who speaks in this book is by no means the author. Rather, the author wishes that the reader may come to see himself in this "I": that the reader may not simply relate to what is said here as he would to history, but rather that while reading he will actually converse with himself, deliberate back and forth, deduce conclusions, make decisions like his representative in the book, and through his own work and reflection, purely out of his own resources, develop and build within himself the philosophical disposition that is presented to him in this book merely as a picture.

We have been given free will, in order that we may will our self-will out of existence and so come to live continuously in a 'state of grace.' All our actions must be directed, in the last analysis, to making ourselves passive in relation to the activity and the being of divine reality. We are, as it were, aeolian harps, endowed with the power either to expose themselves to the wind of the Spirit or to shut themselves away from it.

Philosophy seems to me on the whole a rather hopeless business.

I am a rationalist. ...I mean ...[I] wish... to understand the world, and to learn by arguing with others. (...I do not say a rationalist holds the mistaken theory that men are... rational.)

The painter is turning his eyes towards us only in so far as we happen to occupy the same position as his subject. We, the spectators, are an additional factor. Though greeted by that gaze, we are also dismissed by it, replaced by that which was always there before we were: the model itself. But, inversely, the painter's gaze, addressed to the void confronting him outside the picture, accepts as many models as there are spectators; in this precise but neutral place, the observer and the observed take part in a ceaseless exchange.

One capitalist always kills many.

An agreeable companion on a journey is as good as a carriage.

It is a general popular error to suppose the loudest complainers for the publick to be the most anxious for its welfare.

When the world presents as a force field of violence, the task of nonviolence is to find ways of living and acting in that world such that violence is checked or ameliorated, or its direction turned, precisely at moments when it seems to saturate that world and offer no way out.

The task of a theory of class is to identify the existing conditions for potential collective struggle and express them as a political proposition.

There is no substitute for the comfort supplied by the utterly taken-for-granted relationship.

We share this planet, our home, with millions of species. Justice and sustainability both demand that we do not use more resources than we need. Restraint in resource use and living within nature's limits are preconditions for social justice. The commons are where justice and sustainability converge, where ecology and equity meet. The survival of pastures and forests as community property, or of a common good like a stable ecosystem, is only possible with social organizations with checks and controls on the use of resources built into their principles. The breakdown of a community, with the associated erosion of concepts of joint ownership and responsibility, can trigger the degradation of common resources.

Covetousness, and the desire of having in our possession, and under our dominion, more than we have need of, being the root of all evil, should be early and carefully weeded out, and the contrary quality of a readiness to impart to others, implanted. This should be encourag'd by great commendation and credit, and constantly taking care that he loses nothing by his liberality.