I wouldn't give an astrologer the time of day.

That is why St. John of the Cross calls faith a night. With those who have received a Christian education, the lower parts of the soul become attached to these mysteries when they have no right at all to do so. That is why such people need a purification of which St. John of the Cross describes the stages. Atheism and incredulity constitute an equivalent of such a purification.

That which is best about conservatism, that which, though it cannot be expressed in detail, inspires reverence in all, is the Inevitable.

Thought depends largely on the stomach. In spite of this, those with the best stomachs are not always the best thinkers.

The nature of the Absolute State consists herein, -that all individual powers be directed towards the Life of the Race,-in place of which Race, the State puts the aggregate of its own Citizens. It therefore becomes necessary, first, that all Individuals, without exception, should be taken into equal consideration by the State; and second, that every Individual, with all his individual powers, without exception or reserve, should be taken into equal consideration. In a State so constituted, where all, as Individuals, are dedicated to the Race, it follows at the same time, that all without exception, with all the Rights which belong to them as component parts of the Race, are dedicated to all the other individual members of the State.

If by enlightenment and intellectual progress we mean the freeing of man from superstitious belief in evil forces, in demons and fairies, in blind fate-in short, emancipation of fear-then denunciation of what is currently called reason is the greatest service reason can render.

Intellect is invisible to the man who has none.

Throughout the years in which the US was punishing countries that departed from fiscal prudence, it was borrowing on a colossal scale to finance tax cuts and fund its over-stretched military commitments. Now, with federal finances critically dependent on continuing large inflows of foreign capital, it will be the countries that spurned the American model of capitalism that will shape America's economic future.

What's interesting about the world today is that the fundamental division is... a... sociological one between people that have better educations, that live in big urban agglomerations, that then can then benefit from... a global economy, versus people who live in... smaller cities and towns, or in the countryside... with more traditional values. That division exists almost universally, in Turkey... Hungary... the United States, in Britain... It does reflect different economic opportunities, but more fundamentally... it reflects a... way of life, that in the urban case is... liberal and open, but in some cases... people would say a little... too open and too tolerant of... people that want to break traditional norms that are still maintained by... other parts of the population. So it's really that cultural fight... that's at the center of populism, related to,.. but certainly not fundamentally driven by economic inequality.

Ever since the first World War, when the system of liberalism began to shape into the system of authoritarianism, a widespread opinion has blames Hegelianism for the ideological of the new system.

The suppression of liberty is always likely to be irrational.

The whole life of the upper classes is a constant inconsistency. The more delicate a man's conscience is, the more painful this contradiction is to him.

Men are eager to tread underfoot what they have once too much feared.

Maybe suffering has no more justification than life.

Is anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Is the word so difficult to learn?

The superior man governs men, according to their nature, with what is proper to them, and as soon as they change what is wrong, he stops.

Among most Christians the Old Testament is little read in comparison to the New Testament. Furthermore, much of what is read is often distorted by prejudice. Frequently the Old Testament is believed to express exclusively the principles of justice and revenge, in contrast to the New Testament, which represents those of love and mercy; even the sentence, "Love your neighbor as yourself," is thought by many to derive from the New, not the Old Testament. Or the Old Testament is believed to have been written exclusively in the spirit of narrow nationalism and to contain nothing of supranational universalism so characteristic of the New Testament.

Do not be arrogant because of your knowledge, but confer with the ignorant man as with the learned. For knowledge has no limits, and none has yet achieved perfection in it. Good speech is more hidden than malachite, yet it is found in the possession of women slaves at the millstones.

I am well aware of how anarchic much of what I say may sound. Expressing myself thus abstractly and briefly, I may seem to despair of the very notion of truth. But I beseech you to reserve your judgment until we see it applied to the details which lie before us. I do indeed disbelieve that we or any other mortal men can attain on a given day to absolutely incorrigible and unimprovable truth about such matters of fact as those with which religions deal. But I reject this dogmatic ideal not out of a perverse delight in intellectual instability. I am no lover of disorder and doubt as such. Rather do I fear to lose truth by this pretension to possess it already wholly.

The young watch television twenty-four hours a day, they don't read and they rarely listen. This incessant bombardment of images has developed a hypertrophied eye condition that's turning them into a race of mutants. They should pass a law for a total reeducation of the young, making children visit the Galleria Borghese on a daily basis.

There is hardly a member of Congress who can make up his mind to go home without having despatched at least one speech to his constituents; nor who will endure any interruption until he has introduced into his harangue whatever useful suggestions may be made touching the four-and-twenty States of which the Union is composed, and especially the district which he represents.

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.

After logic we must proceed to philosophy proper. Here too we have to learn from our predecessors, just as in mathematics and law. Thus it is wrong to forbid the study of ancient philosophy. Harm from it is accidental, like harm from taking medicine, drinking water, or studying law.

Marx shared with economists then and since the inability to make his concepts include innovational processes. It is one thing to spot a new product but quite another to observe the invisible new environments generated by the action of the product on a variety of pre-existing social grounds.

A young delicate tree, that is being clipped and cut by the gardener in order to give it an artificial form, will never reach the majestic height and the beauty as when allowed to grow in nature and freedom.

There is geometry in the humming of the strings, there is music in the spacing of the spheres.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

The saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is, to my mind, a very dangerous adage. If knowledge is real and genuine, I do not believe that it is other than a very valuable possession, however infinitesimal its quantity may be. Indeed, if a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?

There is no general reason to expect evolution to be progressive - even in the weak, value-neutral sense. There will be times when increased size of some organ is favoured and other times when decreased size is favoured. Most of the time, average-sized individuals will be favoured in the population and both extremes will be penalised. During these times the population exhibits evolutionary stasis (i.e., no change) with respect to the factor being measured. If we had a complete fossil record and looked for trends in some particular dimension, such as leg length, we would expect to see periods of no change alternating with fitful continuations or reversals in direction - like a weathervane in changeable, gusty weather.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

Those who promise us paradise on earth never produced anything but a hell.

Long before physics or psychology were born, pain disintegrated matter, and affliction the soul.

What an incalculable debt do we owe to that little speck of land, Greece.-The principles of taste, the finest models of composition, the doctrines and the glorious examples to which we owe political freedom, the arts, the sciences, architecture, sculpture, every thing that is great and splendid in literature and politics, must be considered as ultimately derived from that little peninsula.

It cannot be that axioms established by argumentation should avail for the discovery of new works, since the subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of argument. But axioms duly and orderly formed from particulars easily discover the way to new particulars, and thus render sciences active.

Art is thought, and thought only gives the world an appearance of order to anyone weak enough to be convinced by its show.

I neither approve nor disapprove. I merely try to understand. Sexual freedom is as natural to newly tribalized youth as drugs.

Of practical wisdom these are the three fruits: to deliberate well, to speak to the point, to do what is right.

Force without wisdom falls of its own weight.

In effect, to follow, not to force the public inclination; to give a direction, a form, a technical dress, and a specific sanction, to the general sense of the community, is the true end of legislature.

I do myself a greater injury in lying than I do him of whom I tell a lie.

Tell not abroad what thou intendest to do; for if thou speed not, thou shalt be mocked!

The natural price, therefore, is, as it were, the central price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually gravitating.

Solvency is maintained by means of the national debt, on the principle, "If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?"

You rejoice in having made a convert to Atheism. I think there is something unnatural in a zeal of proselytism in an Atheist. I do not believe in an intellectual God, a God made after the image of man. In the vulgar acceptation of the word, therefore, I think a man is right who does not believe in God, but I am also persuaded that a man is wrong who is without religion.

Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based upon fear and hope, such morality has always been a vile product, imbued partly with self-righteousness, partly with hypocrisy. As to truth, justice, and fidelity, who have been their brave exponents and daring proclaimers? Nearly always the godless ones: the Atheists; they lived, fought, and died for them. They knew that justice, truth, and fidelity are not conditioned in heaven, but that they are related to and interwoven with the tremendous changes going on in the social and material life of the human race; not fixed and eternal, but fluctuating, even as life itself.

Now men seem, not unreasonably, to form their notions of the supreme good and of happiness from the lives of men.

In any race between human numbers and natural resources, time is against us.

The basis of science is the empirical method, which uses the senses to build up a picture of the world; but science tells us that our senses have evolved to help us get by, not to show us the world as it is. Science is only a systematic examination of our impressions, and in the end all each of us has left are our own sensations ... The end-result of the empirical method, then, is that each individual is left alone with their own experiences. We can escape this solitude, Balfour suggested, only if we accept that there is a divine mind.

Nothing appears more surprising to those, who consider human affairs with a philosophical eye, than the easiness with which the many are governed by the few; and the implicit submission, with which men resign their own sentiments and passions to those of their rulers. When we enquire by what means this wonder is effected, we shall find, that, as Force is always on the side of the governed, the governors have nothing to support them but opinion. It is therefore, on opinion only that government is founded; and this maxim extends to the most despotic and most military governments, as well as to the most free and most popular.