Whatever is merely positive is lifeless. Negativity is essential to vitality.

Virtuous men alone possess friends.

Tis the sharpness of our mind that gives the edge to our pains and pleasures.

The third category of which I come now to speak is precisely that whose reality is denied by nominalism. For although nominalism is not credited with any extraordinarily lofty appreciation of the powers of the human soul, yet it attributes to it a power of originating a kind of ideas the like of which Omnipotence has failed to create as real objects, and those general conceptions which men will never cease to consider the glory of the human intellect must, according to any consistent nominalism, be entirely wanting in the mind of Deity.

Roemer used eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter, and sought how much the event fell behind its prediction. But... this prediction is made... by... astronomic laws; for instance Newton's... The velocity of light... is adopted, such that the astronomic laws compatible with this value may be as simple as possible.

I well knew that to propose something which would be called extreme, was the true way not to impede but to facilitate a more moderate experiment.

So long as the product is sold, everything is taking its regular course from the standpoint of the capitalist producer.

Of the truths within our reach... the mind and the heart are as doors by which they are received into the soul, but... few enter by the mind, whilst they are brought in crowds by the rash caprices of the will, without the council of reason.

In these days the angel of topology and the devil of abstract algebra fight for the soul of each individual mathematical domain.

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 monuments of wit survive the monuments of power.

Always remember that it is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood: there will always be some who misunderstand you.

Whenever one tries to suppress doubt, there is tyranny.

In Oran, as elsewhere, for want of time and thought, people have to love one another without knowing it.

A pupil and a teacher. The pupil will not let anything be explained to him, for he continually interrupts with doubts, for instance as to the existence of things, the meaning for words, etc. The teacher says "Stop interrupting me and do as I tell you. So far your doubts don't make sense at all."

If Christianity is wine and Islam coffee, Buddhism is most certainly tea.

He who remembers the evils he has undergone, and those that have threatened him, and the slight causes that have changed him from one state to another, prepares himself in that way for future changes and for recognizing his condition. The life of Caesar has no more to show us than our own; an emperor's or an ordinary man's, it is still a life subject to all human accidents.

I am fast becoming a patriot of the most decided stamp. Scornfully as I used to speak and think of Scotland in my hours of bitterness and irritation, I never fail to stand up manfully in defence of it thro' thick and thin, whenever a renegade Scot takes upon him to abuse it.

Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are.

We have now completed both the spiritual and the temporal government, that is, the divine and the paternal authority and obedience. But here now we go forth from our house among our neighbors to learn how we should live with one another, every one himself toward his neighbor. Therefore God and government are not included in this commandment nor is the power to kill, which they have taken away. For God has delegated His authority to punish evil-doers to the government instead of parents, who aforetime (as we read in Moses) were required to bring their own children to judgment and sentence them to death. Therefore, what is here forbidden is forbidden to the individual in his relation to any one else, and not to the government.

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?

I don't believe in flying saucers... The energy requirements of interstellar travel are so great that it is inconceivable to me that any creatures piloting their ships across the vast depths of space would do so only in order to play games with us over a period of decades.

All of those who are "without" - without employment, without residence, without housing - are really excluded only in part.

When He died in the Wounded World He died not for men, but for each man. If each man had been the only man made, He would have done no less. Each thing, from the single grain of Dust to the strongest eldil, is the end and the final cause of all creation and the mirror in which the beam of His brightness comes to rest and so returns to Him. Blessed be He!

The more intense a spiritual leader's appetite for power, the more he is concerned to limit it to others.

Figure to yourself the mixture of surprise and delight which has this instant been poured into my mind by the sound of my name, as uttered by you, in the speech just read to me out of the Morning Herald... By one and the same man, not only Parliamentary Reform, but Law Reform advocated. Advocated? and by what man? By one who, in the vulgar sense of profit and loss, has nothing to gain by it... Yes, only from Ireland could such self-sacrifice come; nowhere else: least of all in England, cold, selfish, priest-ridden, lawyer-ridden, lord-ridden, squire-ridden, soldier-ridden England, could any approach to it be found.

The Institution has been devised to afford the means of receiving your children at an early age, almost as soon as they can walk. By this means many of you, mothers and families, will be able to earn a better maintenance or support for your children; you will have less care and anxiety about them, while the children will be prevented from acquiring any bad habits. and gradually prepared to learn the best.

...no legislator, at any period of the world, has willingly placed the seat of active power in the hands of the multitude: Because there it admits of no control, no regulation; no steady direction whatsoever. The people are the natural control on authority; but to exercise and to control together is contradictory and impossible.

For love of bustle is not industry - it is only the restlessness of a hunted mind.

If A were not allowed his better position, B would be even worse off than he is.

As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurian. I consider the genuine (not the imputed) doctrines of Epicurus as containing everything rational in moral philosophy which Greece and Rome have left us.

He who is running a race ought to endeavor and strive to the utmost of his ability to come off victor; but it is utterly wrong for him to trip up his competitor, or to push him aside. So in life it is not unfair for one to seek for himself what may accrue to his benefit; but it is not right to take it from another.

The first thing that we know about ourselves is our imperfection.

He and his tyrannicide! I am in a mad fury about these explosions. If that is the new world! Damn O'Donovan Rossa; damn him behind and before, above, below, and roundabout; damn, deracinate, and destroy him, root and branch, self and company, world without end. Amen. I write that for sport if you like, but I will pray in earnest, O Lord, if you cannot convert, kindly delete him!

Darwinist thinkers such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett are militant opponents of Christianity. Yet their atheism and humanism are versions of Christian concepts. As a defender of Darwinism, Dawkins is committed to the view that humans are like other animal species in being 'gene machines' ruled by the laws of natural selection. He asserts nevertheless that humans, uniquely, can defy these natural laws: 'We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.' In affirming human uniqueness in this way, Dawkins relies on a Christian world-view.

They sang the praises of nature, of the sea, of the woods. They liked making songs about one another, and praised each other like children; they were the simplest songs, but they sprang from their hearts and went to one's heart. And not only in their songs but in all their lives they seemed to do nothing but admire one another. It was like being in love with each other, but an all-embracing, universal feeling.

There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic. They both desire to rule over life: the former, by knowing how to meet his principle needs by means of foresight, prudence, and regularity; the latter, by disregarding these needs and, as an "overjoyed hero," counting as real only that life which has been disguised as illusion and beauty.

Terms must be constructed and appropriated so as to be fitted to enunciate simply and clearly true general propositions.

Whatever be the substance which takes possession of such a soul, it will produce the same result, and will change into a pretext for not conforming to any concrete purpose. If it appears as reactionary or anti-liberal it will be in order to affirm that the salvation of the State gives a right to level down all other standards, and to manhandle one's neighbour, above all if one's neighbour is an outstanding personality. But the same happens if it decides to act the revolutionary; the apparent enthusiasm for the manual worker, for the afflicted and for social justice, serves as a mask to facilitate the refusal of all obligations, such as courtesy, truthfulness and, above all, respect or esteem for superior individuals. ... As regards other kinds of Dictatorship, we have seen only too well how they flatter the mass-man, by trampling on everything that appeared to be above the common level.

The husband who decides to surprise his wife is often very much surprised himself.

It is the peculiarity of privilege and of every privileged position to kill the intellect and heart of man. The privileged man, whether he be privileged politically or economically, is a man depraved in intellect and heart.

Form displays the relation itself as the state of original comportment toward beings, the festive state in which the being itself in its essence is celebrated and thus for the first time placed in the open.

Our studies of sexual life, originating in Vienna and in England, are matched or surpassed by Hindu teachings on this subject... Psychoanalysis itself and the lines of thought to which it gives rise-surely a distinctly Western development-are only a beginner's attempt compared to what is an immemorial art in the East.

We need to confront honestly the issue of scale. Bigness has a charm and a drama that are seductive, especially to politicians and financiers; but bigness promotes greed, indifference, and damage, and often bigness is not necessary. You may need a large corporation to run an airline or to manufacture cars, but you don't need a large corporation to raise a chicken or a hog. You don't need a large corporation to process local food or local timber and market it locally.

The learning of the gentleman enters through his ears, fastens to his heart, spreads through his four limbs, and manifests itself in his actions. ... The learning of the petty person enters through his ears and passes out his mouth. From mouth to ears is only four inches-how could it be enough to improve a whole body much larger than that?

Revolutionaries do not make revolutions! The revolutionaries are those who know when power is lying in the street and when they can pick it up. Armed uprising by itself has never yet led to revolution.

That which I am now entering upon being the Consideration of the things themselves whereinto Spagyrists resolve mixt Bodies by the Fire, If I can shew that these are not of an Elementary Nature, it will be no great matter what names these or those Chymists have been pleased to give them. And I question not that to a Wise man, and consequently to Eleutherius, it will be lesse considerable to know, what Men Have thought of Things, then what they Should have thought.

I had imagined that the prelates of the Galilaeans were under greater obligations to me than to my predecessor. For in his reign many of them were banished, persecuted, and imprisoned, and many of the so-called heretics were executed ... all of this has been reversed in my reign; the banished are allowed to return, and confiscated goods have been returned to the owners. But such is their folly and madness that, just because they can no longer be despots, ... or carry out their designs first against their brethren, and then against us, the worshippers of the gods, they are inflamed with fury and stop at nothing in their unprincipled attempts to alarm and enrage the people.

The empirical research of the last fifteen years on the structure of large organizations seems to confirm the hypothesis of Herbert Simon that human cognitive limits are a basic limiting factor in determining organization structures .