It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?

Private profit is often hidden under a careful coating of great patriotism.

Virtue is debased by self-justification.

He who is in love is wise and is becoming wiser, sees newly every time he looks at the object beloved, drawing from it with his eyes and his mind those virtues which it possesses.

Since we live in a society that promotes faddism and temporary superficial adaptation of different values, we are easily convinced that changes have occurred in arenas where there has been little or no change.

Any man more right than his neighbors constitutes a majority of one.

Universal is known according to reason, but that which is particular, according to sense...

Despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?

The bourgeoisie ... lets him have the appearance of acting from a free choice, of making a contract with free, unconstrained consent, as a responsible agent who has attained his majority. Fine freedom, where the proletarian has no other choice than that of either accepting the conditions which the bourgeoisie offers him, or of starving, of freezing to death, of sleeping naked among the beasts of the forests!

Paradise was unendurable, otherwise the first man would have adapted to it; this world is no less so, since here we regret paradise or anticipate another one. What to do? Where to go? Do nothing and go nowhere, easy enough.

Intuitionism is not constructive, perfectionism is unacceptable.

The principles of justice are chosen behind a veil of ignorance.

It is entirely clear that there is only one way in which great wars can be permanently prevented, and that is the establishment of an international government with a monopoly of serious armed force.

Granted that any practice causes more pain to animals than it gives pleasure to man; is that practice moral or immoral? And if, exactly in proportion as human beings raise their heads out of the slough of selfishness, they do not with one voice answer 'immoral,' let the morality of the principle of utility be for ever condemned.

When I found myself regarded as respectable, I began to wonder what sins I had committed. I must be very wicked, I thought. I began to engage in the most uncomfortable introspection. Interview with Irwin Ross, September 1957;If there were a God, I think it very unlikely that he would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt his existence.

It is not politics that can bring true liberty to the soul; that must be achieved, if at all, by philosophy;

The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war.

Above and before all things, worship GOD!

The directing motive, the end and aim of capitalist production, is to extract the greatest possible amount of surplus value, and consequently to exploit labor-power to the greatest possible extent.

Needs must it be hard, since it is so seldom found. How would it be possible, if salvation were ready to our hand, and could without great labour be found, that it should be by almost all men neglected? But all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.

Against the diseases of the mind, philosophy provides sufficient antidotes. The instruments which it employs for this purpose are the virtues; the root of which, whence all the rest proceed, is prudence. This virtue comprehends the whole art of living discreetly, justly, and honorably, and is, in fact, the same thing with wisdom. It instructs men to free their understandings from the clouds of prejudice; to exercise temperance and fortitude in the government of themselves: and to practice justice towards others. Although pleasure, or happiness, which is the end of living, be superior to virtue, which is only the means, it is every one's interest to practice all the virtues; for in a happy life, pleasure can never be separated from virtue.

To speak of love is not "preaching," for the simple reason that it means to speak of the ultimate and real need of every human being. That this need has been obscured does not mean it does not exist. To analyze the nature of love is to discover its general absence today and to criticize the social conditions which are responsible for this absence. To have faith in the possibility of love as a social and not only exceptional-individual phenomenon, is a rational faith based on the insight into the very nature of man.

The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.

The superior man is modest in his speech, but exceeds in his actions. James Legge translation. Variant translations: The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his actions. The greater man does not boast of himself, But does what he must do. A good man does not give orders, but leads by example.

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

He who would teach men to die would teach them to live.

Men never do good unless necessity drives them to it; but when they are free to choose and can do just as they please, confusion and disorder become rampant.

Great and enduring civilizations like those of the Hindus and the Chinese were built upon this foundation and developed from it a discipline of self-knowledge which they brought to a high pitch of refinement both in philosophy and practice.

An anxious man constructs his terrors, then installs himself within them: a stay-at-home in a yawning chasm.

The fact is that I've never called myself a genius, and I think the term has been cheapened by overuse into meaninglessness. If other people want to call me that, that's their problem.

And now I ask, whether, with this map of misgovernment before me, I can suppose myself bound by my vote to continue, upon any principles of pretended public faith, the management of these countries in those hands? If I kept such a faith (which in reality is no better than a fides latronum) with what is called the Company, I must break the faith, the covenant, the solemn, original, indispensable oath, in which I am bound, by the eternal frame and constitution of things, to the whole human race.

Therefore every scribe which is instructed unto the kingdom of heaven is like unto a man that is an householder, which bringeth forth out of his treasure things new and old.

I am he that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death. Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter.

The prestige of the Nobel Prize is due to many causes, but in particular to its twofold idealistic and international character: idealistic in that it has been designed for works of lofty inspiration; international in that it is awarded after the production of different countries has been minutely studied and the intellectual balance sheet of the whole world has been drawn up. Free from all other considerations and ignoring any but intellectual values, the judges have deliberately taken their place in what the philosophers have called a community of the mind.

Nothing is ever gotten out of nothing by divine power.

But tell me this: did you never love any person... were you never commanded by the person beloved to do something which you did not wish to do? Have you never flattered your little slave? Have you never kissed her feet? And yet if any man compelled you to kiss Caesar's feet, you would think it an insult and excessive tyranny. What else then is slavery?

Whilst in speaking of human things, we say that it is necessary to know them before we can love them...the saints on the contrary say in speaking of divine things that it is necessary to love them in order to know them, and that we only enter truth through charity.

By incestuous symbiosis is meant the tendency to stay tied to the mother and to her equivalents - blood, family, tribe - to fly from the unbearable weight of responsibility, of freedom, of awareness, and to be protected and loved in a state of certainty dependence that the individual pays for with the ceasing of his own human development.

Do not let habit, born from experience, force you along this road, directing aimless eye and echoing ear and tongue; but judge by reason the much contested proof which I have spoken.

I find that the best goodness I have has some tincture of vice.

It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go. The difference is that you can compel your car to go to a garage, but you cannot compel Hitler to go to a psychiatrist.

All journeys have secret destinations of which the traveler is unaware.

"Young men," said Cæsar, "hear an old man to whom old men hearkened when he was young."

Even more than in a poem, it is the aphorism that the word is god.

I see not the shadow of a reason to conclude that their [the sexes'] virtues should differ in respect to their nature. In fact, how can they, if virtue has only one eternal standard? I must therefore, if I reason consequentially, as strenuously maintain that they must have the same simple direction as that there is a God.

Men will always be mad, and those who think they can cure them are the maddest of all.

If I were to be totally sincere, I would say that I do not know why I live and why I do not stop living. The answer probably lies in the irrational character of life which maintains itself without reason.

No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.