It is not you talking. Nor is it your race only which shouts within you, for all the innumerable races of mankind shout and rush within you: white, yellow, black. Free yourself from race also; fight to live through the whole struggle of man.

By far the most valuable things, which we know or can imagine, are certain states of consciousness, which may roughly be described as the pleasures of human intercourse and the enjoyment of beautiful objects. No one, probably, who has asked himself the question, has ever doubted that personal affection and the appreciation of what is beautiful in Art or Nature, are good in themselves; nor, if we consider strictly what things are worth having purely for their own sakes, does it appear probable that any one will think that anything else has nearly so much value as the things which are included under these two heads.

My friends, I tell you that hitherto you have been prevented from even knowing what happiness really is, solely in consequence of the errors - gross errors - that have been combined with the fundamental notions of every religion that has hitherto been taught to men. And, in consequence, they have made man the most inconsistent, and the most miserable being in existence. By the errors of these systems he has been made a weak, imbecile animal; a furious bigot and fanatic or a miserable hypocrite; and should these qualities be carried, not only into the projected villages, but into Paradise itself, a Paradise would no longer be found!

No one has the right to obey.

Every state, like every theology, assumes man to be fundamentally bad and wicked.

I am a determinist. As such, I do not believe in free will. The Jews believe in free will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine philosophically. In that respect, I am not a Jew.

It would be an endless task to trace the variety of meannesses, cares, and sorrows, into which women are plunged by the prevailing opinion that they were created rather to feel than reason, and that all the power they obtain, must be obtained by their charms and weakness.

Art expresses, it does not state; it is concerned with existences in their perceived qualities, not with conceptions symbolized in terms.

Abstract terms (however useful they may be in argument) should be discarded in meditation, and the mind should be fixed on the particular and the concrete, that is, on the things themselves.

Social positivism only accepts duties, for all and towards all. Its constant social viewpoint cannot include any notion of rights, for such notion always rests on individuality. We are born under a load of obligations of every kind, to our predecessors, to our successors, to our contemporaries. These obligations then increase or accumulate, for it is some time before we can return any service. ... Any human right is therefore as absurd as immoral. Since there are no divine rights anymore, this concept must therefore disappear completely as related only to the preliminary regime and totally inconsistent with the final state where there are only duties based on functions.

God only pours out his light into the mind after having subdued the rebellion of the will by an altogether heavenly gentleness which charms and wins it.

Men and women meet now to be idle. Is it extraordinary that they do not know each other, and that, in their mutual ignorance, they form no surer friendships? Did they meet to do something together, then indeed they might form some real tie. But, as it is, they are not there, it is only a mask which is there - a mouth-piece of ready-made sentences about the "topics of the day"; and then people rail against men for choosing a woman "for her face" - why, what else do they see?

Not to be content with Life is the unsatisfactory state of those which destroy themselves; who being afraid to live, run blindly upon their own Death, which no Man fears by Experience.

The images of mankind have become the most basic thing about them. And they're all software, and disembodied.

Radiation, unlike smoking, drinking, and overeating, gives no pleasure, so the possible victims object.

The collective name for the ripe fruits of religion in a character is Saintliness. The saintly character is the character for which spiritual emotions are the habitual centre of the personal energy; and there is a certain composite photograph of universal saintliness, the same in all religions, of which the features can easily be traced.

To execute laws is a royal office; to execute orders is not to be a king. However, a political executive magistracy, though merely such, is a great trust.

And first the Doctrine that all their Theory is grounded on, seems to me Inevident and undemonstrated, not to say precarious.

Acquire the contemplative way of seeing how all things change into one another, and constantly attend to it, and exercise thyself about this part [of philosophy]. For nothing is so much adapted to produce magnanimity. ...But as to what any man shall say or think about him, or do against him, he never even thinks of it, being himself contented with these two things: with acting justly in what he now does, and being satisfied with what is now assigned to him; and he lays aside all distracting and busy pursuits, and desires nothing else than to accomplish the straight course through the law, and by accomplishing the straight course to follow God.

Consider the great elements of human enjoyment, the attainments and possessions that exalt man's life to its present height, and see what part of these he owes to institutions, to Mechanism of any kind; and what to the instinctive, unbounded force, which Nature herself lent him.

Yet when we speak of time... do we not unconsciously adopt this hypothesis... and put ourselves in the place of this imperfect god... Do not even the atheists put themselves in the place where god would be..?

Poetry is the mysticism of mankind.

Talent works for money and fame; the motive which moves genius to productivity is, on the other hand, less easy to determine. It isn't money, for genius seldom gets any. It isn't fame: fame is too uncertain and, more closely considered, of too little worth. Nor is it strictly for its own pleasure, for the great exertion involved almost outweighs the pleasure. It is rather an instinct of a unique sort by virtue of which the individual possessed of genius is impelled to express what he has seen and felt in enduring works without being conscious of any further motivation. It takes place, by and large, with the same sort of necessity as a tree brings forth fruit, and demands of the world no more than a soil on which the individual can flourish.

Nothing seems at first sight less important than the outward form of human actions, yet there is nothing upon which men set more store: they grow used to everything except to living in a society which has not their own manners.

Psychoanalysis is essentially a theory of unconscious strivings, of resistance, of falsification of reality according to one's subjective needs and expectations.

One should be wary of assuming that we're the folk who can properly look after ourselves, whereas our descendants, if they become genetically pre-programmed ecstatics, will get trapped in robot-serviced states of infantile dependence. For it shouldn't be forgotten that exuberantly happy people also have a fierce will to survive. They love life dearly. They take on daunting challenges against seemingly impossible odds. One of the hallmarks of many endogenous depressive states, on the other hand, is so-called behavioural despair. If one learns that apparently no amount of effort can rescue one from an aversive stimulus, then one tends to sink into a lethargic stupor. This syndrome of "learned helplessness" may persist even when the opportunity to escape from the nasty stimulus subsequently arises.

...it is possible to suppose that, if Russia is allowed to have peace, an amazing industrial development may take place, making Russia a rival of the United States.

We live in a world where there is more and more information, and less and less meaning.

I would rather be a devil in alliance with truth, than an angel in alliance with falsehood.

To pray to God is to flatter oneself that with words one can alter nature.

That books do not take the place of experience, and that learning is no substitute for genius, are two kindred phenomena; their common ground is that the abstract can never take the place of the perceptive.

He is a despicable sage whose wisdom does not profit himself.

He who does not prevent a crime, when he can, encourages it.

Philosophy ... must not bargain away anything of the emphatic concept of truth.

This dysfunction of power was related to a central excess: what might be called the monarchical 'super-power', which identified the right to punish with the personal power of the sovereign.

Verily I say unto you, That a rich man shall hardly enter into the kingdom of heaven. And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.

The might which kills outright is an elementary and coarse form of might. How much more varied in its devices; how much more astonishing in its effects is that other which does not kill; or which delays killing.

Faith and patriotism are the two great thaumaturges of this world. Both are divine; all their actions are prodigies. Do not go to them talking of examination, choice, or discussion; they will say that you blaspheme. They know only two words: submission and belief; with these two levers they raise the world. Even their errors are sublime. These two children of Heaven prove their origin to all eyes by creating and conserving; but if they unite, join their forces, and together take possession of a nation, they exalt it, they divinize it, and they increase its forces a hundred-fold.

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know, the only ones among you who will be really happy are those who have sought and found how to serve.

The essence of the good is a certain kind of moral purpose, and that of the evil is a certain kind of moral purpose.

The important thing is not the planning of an Index Verborum Prohibitorum of current noble nouns, but rather the examination of their linguistic function.

It costs a beautiful person no exertion to paint her image on our eyes; yet how splendid is that benefit! It costs no more for a wise soul to convey his quality to other men.

Heaven and Hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad; but the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue. -- Were one to go round the world with an intention of giving a good supper to the righteous, and a sound drubbing to the wicked, he would frequently be embarrassed in his choice, and would find that the merits and the demerits of most men and women scarcely amount to the value of either.

People who live at the lower ends of watersheds cannot be isolationists - or not for long. Pretty soon they will notice that water flows, and that will set them to thinking about the people upstream who either do or do not send down their silt and pollutants and garbage. Thinking about the people upstream out to cause further thinking about the people downstream. Such pondering on the facts of gravity and the fluidity of water shows us that the golden rule speaks to a condition of absolute interdependency and obligation. People who live on rivers - or, in fact, anywhere in a watershed - might rephrase the rule in this way: Do unto those downstream as you would have those upstream do unto you.

I have greater confidence in my wife and my pupils than I have in Christ.

The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens to that primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.

Anger is a momentary madness so control your passion or it will control you.