Now a life of honour includes various kinds of conduct; it may include the chest in which Regulus was confined, or the wound of Cato which was torn open by Cato's own hand, or the exile of Rutilius, or the cup of poison which removed Socrates from gaol to heaven.

In judging policies we should consider the results that have been achieved through them rather than the means by which they have been executed.

There have been men before ... who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God himself... as if the good Lord had nothing to do but to exist. There have been some who were so preoccupied with spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ.

The more remote and unreal the personal mother is, the more deeply will the son's yearning for her clutch at his soul, awakening that primordial and eternal image of the mother for whose sake everything that embraces, protects, nourishes, and helps assumes maternal form, from the Alma Mater of the university to the personification of cities, countries, sciences and ideals.

The Tories in England long imagined that they were enthusiastic about monarchy, the church, and the beauties of the old English Constitution, until the day of danger wrung from them the confession that they are enthusiastic only about ground rent.

The world's biggest power is the youth and beauty of a woman.

The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.

A truly powerful holder of power does not simply elicit agreement, but enthusiasm and excitement.

One loves to possess arms, though they hope never to have occasion for them.

The idea of living beings as subject to 'disease' includes a recognition of a Final Cause in organization; for disease is a state in which the vital forces do not attain their 'proper ends'.

A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word just as good.

To become like God is the ultimate end of all.

The ceremonial (hot or cold) as opposed to the haphazard (lukewarm) characterizes piety.

Revolution is like the daughters of Pelias: it cuts humanity to pieces in order to rejuvenate it.

No body wishes more than I do to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren, talents equal to those of the other colors of men, and that the appearance of a want of them is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa & America. I can add with truth, that no body wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced for raising the condition both of their body & mind to what it ought to be, as fast as the imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstances which cannot be neglected, will admit.

476 ... is usually taken as the date of the "fall of the Roman Empire." The date, however, is a false one. No one at this period of time considered that the Roman Empire had "fallen." Indeed, it still existed and was the most powerful realm in Europe. Its capital was at Constantinople and the Emperor was Zeno. It is only because we ourselves are culturally descended from the Roman west, that we tend to ignore the continued existence of the Roman Empire in the east.

Life creates itself in delirium and is undone in ennui.

O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me.

An imaginary perfection is automatically at the same level as I who imagine it - neither higher nor lower.

Nothing tends to materialize man and to deprive his work of the faintest trace of mind more than the extreme division of labor.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good; be good for something.

Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck.

The effect of music is so very much more powerful and penetrating than is that of the other arts, for these others speak only of the shadow, but music of the essence.

A man should build a house with his own hands before he calls himself an engineer.

It is in the social sphere, in the realm of politics and economics, that the Will to Order becomes really dangerous.

The mind itself, its love [of itself] and its knowledge [of itself] are a kind of trinity.

What is objective must be common to many minds and consequently transmissible from one to the other, and as this transmission can only come about by... discourse... we are even forced to conclude: no discourse no objectivity.

Dispersed as the Jews are, they still form one nation, foreign to the land they live in.

It is therefore, the interest of all, that every one, from birth, should be well educated, physically and mentally, that society may be improved in its character, - that everyone should be beneficially employed, physically and mentally, that the greatest amount of wealth may be created, and knowledge attained, - that everyone should be placed in the midst of those external circumstances that will produce the greatest number of pleasurable sensations, through the longest life, that man may be made truly intelligent, moral and happy, and be thus prepared to enter upon the coming Millennium.

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.

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure...

The equation of religion with belief is rather recent.

Waste not the remnant of thy life in those imaginations touching other folk, whereby thou contributest not to the common weal.

It is better to suffer, than to do, wrong.

Love to his soul gave eyes; he knew things are not as they seem. The dream is his real life; the world around him is the dream.

From of old, a thousand thoughts, in his pilgrimings and wanderings, had been in this man: What am I? What is this unfathomable Thing I live in, which men name Universe? What is Life; what is Death? What am I to believe? What am I to do? The grim rocks of Mount Hara, of Mount Sinai, the stern sandy solitudes answered not. The great Heaven rolling silent overhead, with its blue-glancing stars, answered not. There was no answer. The man's own soul, and what of God's inspiration dwelt there, had to answer!

The invasion... exhibits in stark terms, the choice that is before us today between maintaining a liberal government that respects the rights of individuals, or moving over to a form of centralized illiberal dictatorship, even if that... illiberal government is somehow democratically legitimated. ...That's the central issue in global politics today. ...That's basically what the... Ukraine invasion is about, and that's why... all liberal societies that care about those individual freedoms... have a very powerful interest in the outcome of that war, because Putin and Russia are at the center of an international network of illiberal forces that are seeking to overturn liberal values in virtually every part of the world, and therefore... that's all part of a larger global struggle over our fundamental liberal values.

Science does not know its debt to imagination.

As you hope to prove your own great value to the state, and having proved it, to attain at once to absolute power, so do I indulge a hope that I shall be the supreme power over you, if I am able to prove my own great value to you. Socrates speaking to Alcibiades

I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.

Any ethics that needs religion is bad ethics, and any religion that tries to do so is bad religion. Of course, there are plenty of both around.

If you use a trick in logic, whom can you be tricking other than yourself?

I've got a one-dimensional mind.

For the mockers are those who die comically, and God laughs at their comic ending, while the nobler part, the part of tragedy, is theirs who endured the mockery.

What all these people are doing is not aggressive; they are inventing new possibilities of pleasure with strange parts of their body - through the eroticization of the body. I think it's ... a creative enterprise, which has as one of its main features what I call the desexualization of pleasure.

In a sense, all explanation must end in an ultimate arbitrariness.

There is only one enduring happiness in life-to live for others.

The deepest thinking is humble. It is only concerned that the flame of truth which it keeps alive should burn with the strongest and purest heat; it does not trouble about the distance to which its brightness penetrates.

Don't for heaven's sake, be afraid of talking nonsense! But you must pay attention to your nonsense.