The selfish spirit of commerce knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain.

Human beings have a physical need to tell themselves when at work: "Let's have done with it now," and it's having constantly to go on thinking in the face of this need when philosophizing that makes this work so strenuous.

As for Hitler, he nourished a fundamental aversion to the monarchy and, as we have noted, his polemic against the Habsburgs, for instance, was of an unparalleled vulgarity. For Hitler, the Volk alone was the principle of legitimacy. He was established as its direct representative and guide, without intermediaries, and it was to follow him unconditionally. No higher princple existed or was tolerated by him. Therefore it is perfectly correct to speak of a consolidated populist dictatorship employing the tools of a single party and the myth of the Volk. Not only the ancient German traditions, but also the very concept of Reich and, as we shall see, the concept of race were brought by Hitler to the level of the masses, which implied their degradation and distorition. Still, in this context they became tools of great power.

Just as an enemy is more dangerous to a retreating army, so every trouble that fortune brings attacks us all the harder if we yield and turn our backs.

The virtues are not poured into us, they are natural. Seek, and you will find them: neglect, and you will lose them.

Two men who differ as to the ends of life cannot hope to agree about education.

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.

Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger. Great emergencies and crises show us how much greater our vital resources are than we had supposed.

He was one of those who wished for the abolition of the Slave Trade. He thought it ought to be abolished on principles of humanity and justice.

I have never said that human society ought to be aristocratic, but a great deal more than that. What I have said, and still believe with ever-increasing conviction, is that human society is always, whether it will or no, aristocratic by its very essence, to the extreme that it is a society in the measure that it is aristocratic, and ceases to be such when it ceases to be aristocratic. Of course I am speaking now of society and not of the State.

The beginning in every task is the chief thing.

I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

Thus mathematics may be defined as the subject in which we never know what we are talking about, nor whether what we are saying is true.

With our present industrial technique we can, if we choose, provide a tolerable subsistence for everybody. We could also secure that the world's population should be stationary if we were not prevented by the political influence of churches which prefer war, pestilence, and famine to contraception. The knowledge exists by which universal happiness can be secured; the chief obstacle to its utilization for that purpose is the teaching of religion. Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific co-operation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

Hype is the awkward and desperate attempt to convince journalists that what you've made is worth the misery of having to review it.

Intellectuals cannot be good revolutionaries; they are just good enough to be assassins.

There is no belief, however foolish, that will not gather its faithful adherents who will defend it to the death.

Whatever part of the animal fabric-whatever series of muscles, whatever viscera might be selected for comparison-the result would be the same-the lower Apes and the Gorilla would differ more than the Gorilla and the Man.

The news of this barbaric orgy of military sadism was kept from the world for half a year. A belated commission of inquiry was appointed by the Government. A committee appointed by the Indian National Congress made a more through investigation and reported 1,200 killed, and 3,600 wounded. Gen. Dyer was censured by the House of Commons, exonerated by the House of Lords, and was retired on a pension. Thinking this was insufficient the militarists of the Empire raised a fund of $150,000 for him and presented him with a jeweled sword of honor. (source: The Case for India - By Will Durant Simon and Schuster, New York. 1930 p. This book was banned by the British Government. Durant held the view that no part of the world suffered so much poverty andoppression as India did and that this was largely due to British imperialism).

No man expects such exact fidelity as a traitor.

The most simple picture one can form about the creation of an empirical science is along the lines of an inductive method. Individual facts are selected and grouped together such that their lawful connection becomes clearly apparent. ... The truly great advances in our understanding of nature originated in a manner almost diametrically opposed to induction. The intuitive grasp of the essentials or a large complex of facts leads the scientist to the postulation of a hypothetical basic law, or several such basic laws. From the basic laws (system of axioms) he derives his conclusions as completely as possible in a purely logically deductive manner. These conclusions, derived from the basic laws (and often only after time-consuming developments and calculations), can then be compared to experience, and in this manner provide criteria for the justification of the assumed basic law.

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.

We refuse to have our conscience bound by any work or law, so that by doing this or that we should be righteous, or leaving this or that undone we should be damned.

The unity is brought about by force.

At the classical origins of philosophic thought, the transcending concepts remained committed to the prevailing separation between intellectual and manual labor to the established society of enslavement. ... Those who bore the brunt of the untrue reality and who, therefore, seemed to be most in need of attaining its subversion were not the concern of philosophy. It abstracted from them and continued to abstract from them.

Be like a rocky promontory against which the restless surf continually pounds; it stands fast while the churning sea is lulled to sleep at its feet. I hear you say, "How unlucky that this should happen to me!" Not at all! Say instead, "How lucky that I am not broken by what has happened and am not afraid of what is about to happen. The same blow might have struck anyone, but not many would have absorbed it without capitulation or complaint."

It is one of the chief skills of the philosopher not to occupy himself with questions which do not concern him.

If one awakens in men the idea of freedom then the free men will incessantly go on to free themselves; if on the contrary, one only educates them, then they will at all times accommodate themselves to circumstance in the most highly educated and elegant manner and degenerate into subservient cringing souls.

Every human being is tried this way in the active service of expectancy. Now comes the fulfillment and relieves him, but soon he is again placed on reconnaissance for expectancy; then he is again relieved, but as long as there is any future for him, he has not yet finished his service. And while human life goes on this way in very diverse expectancy, expecting very different things according to different times and occasions and in different frames of mind, all life is again one nightwatch of expectancy.

Everything intercepts us from ourselves.

And that you may know... what kind of writings I mean, I shall name to you the learned Gassendus his little Syntagma of Epicurus's philosophy, and that most ingenious gentleman Monsieur Descartes his principles of philosophy. For though I purposely refrained, though not altogether from transiently consulting about a few particulars, yet from seriously and orderly reading over those excellent (though disagreeing) books, or so much as Sir Francis Bacon's Novum Organum, that I might not be prepossessed with any theory or principles, till I had spent some time in trying what things themselves would incline me to think; yet beginning now to allow myself to read those excellent books, I find by the little I have read in them already, that if I had read them before I began to write, I might have enriched the ensuing essays with divers truths, which they now want, and have explicated divers things much better than I fear I have done.

Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.

The first remark we have to make, and which - though already presented more than once - cannot be too often repeated when the occasion seems to call for it, - is that what we call principle, aim, destiny, or the nature and idea of Spirit, is something merely general and abstract. Principle - Plan of Existence - Law - is a hidden, undeveloped essence, which as such - however true in itself - is not completely real.

We do not count a man's years until he has nothing else to count.

Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.

Death, they say, acquits us of all obligations.

Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading... Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history,-with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him.

The more one presupposes that his own power will suffice him to realize what he desires the more practical is that desire. When I treat a man contemptuously, I can inspire him with no practical desire to appreciate my grounds of truth. When I treat any one as worthless, I can inspire him with no desire to do right.

To none is life given in freehold; to all on lease.

The best laws cannot make a constitution work in spite of morals; morals can turn the worst laws to advantage. That is a commonplace truth, but one to which my studies are always bringing me back. It is the central point in my conception. I see it at the end of all my reflections.

What is not heartrending is superfluous, at least in music.

What a pity and what a poverty of spirit, to assert that beasts are machines deprived of knowledge and sentiment, which affect all their operations in the same manner, which learn nothing, never improve, &c. Some barbarians seize this dog, who so prodigiously excels man in friendship, they nail him to a table, and dissect him living, to show the mezarian veins. You discover in him all the same organs of sentiment which are in yourself. Answer me, machinist, has nature arranged all the springs of sentiment in this animal that he should not feel? Has he nerves to be incapable of suffering? Do not suppose this impertinent contradiction in nature. The animal has received those of sentiment, memory, and a certain number of ideas. Who has bestowed these gifts, who has given these faculties? He who has made the herb of the field to grow, and who makes the earth gravitate towards the sun.