Cornered vessel without corners, strange cornered vessel, strange cornered vessel.

The more Lil' Kim distorted her natural beauty to become a cartoonlike caricature of whiteness, the larger her success.

By convention sweet is sweet, bitter is bitter, hot is hot, cold is cold, color is color; but in truth there are only atoms and the void.

Cheating ageing by a low-calorie diet, uploading one's mind into a super-computer, migrating into outer space ... Longing for everlasting life, humans show that they remain the death-defined animal.

We suppose, it would seem, that concepts grow in the individual mind like leaves on a tree, and we think to discover their nature by studying their growth; we seek to define them psychologically, in terms of the human mind. But this account makes everything subjective, and if we follow it through to the end, does away with truth. What is known as the history of concepts is really a history either of our knowledge of concepts or of the meanings of words.

By the air which I breathe, and by the water which I drink, I will not endure to be blamed on account of this discourse.

This proof can at most, therefore, demonstrate the existence of an architect of the world, whose efforts are limited by the capabilities of the material with which he works, but not of a creator of the world, to whom all things are subject.

As a way of maintaining relative intellectual independence, having the attitude of an amateur instead of a professional is a better course.

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

Mercantile jealousy is excited, and both inflames, and is itself inflamed, by the violence of national animosity.

Looking back we can see how indirectly we know the environment in which nevertheless we live. We can see that the news of it comes to us now fast, now slowly; but that whatever we believe to be a true picture, we treat as if it were the environment itself.

He who gives himself entirely to his fellow-men appears to them useless and selfish; but he who gives himself partially to them is pronounced a benefactor and philanthropist.

A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with reality, and lives in a world of illusion.

From the point of view of semantics, errors must be accidents: if in the extension of "horse" there are no cows, then it cannot be required for the meaning of "horse" that cows be called horses. On the other hand, if "horse" did not mean that which it means, and if it were an error for horses, it would never be possible for a cow to be called "horse." Putting the two things together, it can be seen that the possibility of falsely saying "this is a horse" presupposes the existence of a semantic basis for saying it truly, but not vice versa. If we put this in terms of the crude causal theory, the fact that cows cause one to say "horse" depends on the fact that horses cause one to say "horse"; but the fact that horses cause one to say "horse" does not depend on the fact that cows cause one to say "horse"...

Things essentially incorporeal, because they are more excellent than all body and place, are every where, not with interval, but impartibly. Things essentially incorporeal are not locally present with bodies but are present with them when they please; by verging towards them so far as they are naturally adapted so to verge. They are not, however, present with them locally, but through habitude, proximity, and alliance. Things essentially incorporeal, are not present with bodies, by hypostasis and essence; for they are not mingled with bodies. But they impart a certain power which is proximate to bodies, through verging towards them. For tendency constitutes a certain secondary power proximate to bodies.

Whenever convictions are not arrived at by direct contact with the world and the objects themselves, but indirectly through a critique of the opinions of others, the processes of thinking are impregnated with ressentiment. The establishment of "criteria" for testing the correctness of opinions then becomes the most important task. Genuine and fruitful criticism judges all opinions with reference to the object itself. Ressentiment criticism, on the contrary, accepts no "object" that has not stood the test of criticism.

Another argument of hope may be drawn from this - that some of the inventions already known are such as before they were discovered it could hardly have entered any man's head to think of; they would have been simply set aside as impossible. For in conjecturing what may be men set before them the example of what has been, and divine of the new with an imagination preoccupied and colored by the old; which way of forming opinions is very fallacious, for streams that are drawn from the springheads of nature do not always run in the old channels.

Neither of us cares a straw for popularity. A proof of this is for example, that, because of aversion to any personality cult, I have never permitted the numerous expressions of appreciation from various countries with which I was pestered during the existence of the International to reach the realm of publicity, and have never answered them, except occasionally by a rebuke. When Engels and I first joined the secret Communist Society we made it a condition that everything tending to encourage superstitious belief in authority was to be removed from the statutes.

He chooses the most feared, most hated man in order to worship him as a god, feeling sure that he is alone in perceiving the god's secret virtues.

Every word instantly becomes a concept precisely insofar as it is not supposed to serve as a reminder of the unique and entirely individual original experience to which it owes its origin; but rather, a word becomes a concept insofar as it simultaneously has to fit countless more or less similar cases which means, purely and simply, cases which are never equal and thus altogether unequal. Every concept arises from the equation of unequal things. Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects.

For we are social beings, who can exist and behave as autonomous agents only because we are supported in our ventures by that feeling of primal safety that the bond of society brings. We can envisage no project and no satisfaction on which the eyes of others do not shine. We are joined to those others, and even when they are strangers to us, they are also part of us. It is the indispensable need for membership that brings the national idea to our minds; and there is no rational argument that will expel it, once it is there. Without it, we are homeless; and even if our attitude to home is one of sour disaffection, home is no less necessary to our sense of who we are.

Love the little trade which thou hast learned, and be content therewith.

What can be said can and should always be said more and more simply and clearly.

...as the great Unitarian preacher Channing pointed out, that in France and Spain there are multitudes who have proceeded from rejecting Popery to absolute atheism, because "the fact is, that false and absurd doctrines, when exposed, have a natural tendency to beget skepticism in those who receive them without reflection. None are so likely to believe too little as those who have begun by believing too much." Here is, indeed, the terrible danger of believing too much. But no! the terrible danger comes from another quarter - from seeking to believe with the reason and not with the life.

The merits of democracy are negative: it does not insure good government, but it prevents certain evils.

"What is meant by saying that my choice of which way to walk home after the lecture is ambiguous and matter of chance?...It means that both Divinity Avenue and Oxford Street are called but only one, and that one either one, shall be chosen.

It may be, then, that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work and that when we no longer know which way to go we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings.

We want no foreign examples to rekindle in us the flame of liberty. The example of our own ancestors is abundantly sufficient to maintain the spirit of freedom in its full vigour, and to qualify it in all its exertions. The example of a wise, moral, well-natured, and well-tempered spirit of freedom, is that alone which can be useful to us, or in the least degree reputable or safe. Our fabric is so constituted; one part of it bears so much on the other, the parts, are so made for one another, and for nothing else, that to introduce any foreign matter into it, is to destroy it.

Science is a cemetery of dead ideas, even though life may issue from them.

The only significance of life consists in helping to establish the kingdom of God; and this can be done only by means of the acknowledgment and profession of the truth by each one of us. Chapter XII, Conclusion-Repent Ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at Hand Variant translation: The sole meaning of life is to serve humanity by contributing to the establishment of the kingdom of God, which can only be done by the recognition and profession of the truth by every man.

Glorious is the risk! - καλος γαρ ο κινδυνος, glorious is the risk that we are able to run of our souls never dying ... Faced with this risk, I am presented with arguments designed to eliminate it, arguments demonstrating the absurdity of the belief in the immortality of the soul; but these arguments fail to make any impression on me, for they are reasons and nothing more than reasons, and it is not with reasons that the heart is appeased. I do not want to die - no; I neither want to die nor do I want to want to die; I want to live for ever and ever and ever. I want this "I" to live - this poor "I" that I am and that I feel myself to be here and now, and therefore the problem of the duration of my soul, of my own soul, tortures me.

All parties seem to be agreed on one point, that the dialects commonly spoken among the natives of this part of India contain neither literary nor scientific information, and are moreover so poor and rude that, until they are enriched from some other quarter, it will not be easy to translate any valuable work into them.

We were ensnared by the wisdom of the serpent; we are set free by the foolishness of God.

I subdue matter and force it to become my mind's good medium. I rejoice in plants, in animals, in man and in gods, as though they were my children. I feel all the universe nestling about me and following me as though it were my own body.

Art like life should be free, since both are experimental.

It takes two to speak the truth, - one to speak, and another to hear.

What! all of us, Christians, not only profess to love one another, but do actually live one common life; we whose social existence beats with one common pulse-we aid one another, learn from one another, draw ever closer to one another to our mutual happiness, and find in this closeness the whole meaning of life!-and to-morrow some crazy ruler will say some stupidity, and another will answer in the same spirit, and then I must go expose myself to being murdered, and murder men-who have done me no harm-and more than that, whom I love. And this is not a remote contingency, but the very thing we are all preparing for, which is not only probable, but an inevitable certainty.

Religion has two principal enemies, fanaticism and infidelity, or that which is called atheism. The first requires to be combated by reason and morality, the other by natural philosophy.

What do you want to do with the [Communist] Party? A racing stable? What good is it to sharpen a knife every day if you never use it for slicing? A party is never more than a means. There is only one objective: power.

The wine is bottled poetry.

Profound skepticism is favorable to conventions, because it doubts that the criticism of conventions is any truer than they are.

Purity is for man, next to life, the greatest good that parity is procured by the Law of Mazda to him who cleanses his own self with Good Thoughts, Words, and Deeds.

Newton... (after having remarked that geometry only requires two of the mechanical actions which it postulates, namely, to describe a straight line and a circle) says: geometry is proud of being able to achieve so much while taking so little from extraneous sources. One might say of metaphysics, on the other hand: it stands astonished, that with so much offered it by pure mathematics it can effect so little. In the meantime, this little is something which mathematics indispensably requires in its application to natural science, which, inasmuch as it must here necessarily borrow from metaphysics, need not be ashamed to allow itself to be seen in company with the latter.

The more you make people alike, the more competition you have. Competition is based on the principle of conformity.

Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.

All that is Life in me urges me to give up God.

Many people today hold to a Gnostic view of things without realizing the fact. Believing that human beings can be fully understood in the terms of scientific materialism, they reject any idea of free will. But they cannot give up hope of being masters of their destiny. So they have come to believe that science will somehow enable the human mind to escape the limitations that shape its natural condition. Throughout much of the world, and particularly in western countries, the Gnostic faith that knowledge can give humans a freedom no other creature can possess has become the predominant religion.

People talk sometimes of a bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it.

Let us now enquire whether anger be in accordance with nature, and whether it be useful and worth entertaining in some measure.