Of course, there are those - Sandel, Walzer and Dworkin, for example - who propose "communitarian" ways of thinking, as a further move in the direction which a sophisticated liberalism requires. But none of them is prepared to accept the real price of community: which is sanctity, intolerance, exclusion, and a sense that life's meaning depends upon obedience, and also on vigilance against the enemy.

Imagination is the soul, since it plays all the roles of the soul.

Perfectibility is one of the most unequivocal characteristics of the human species.

Scientific beliefs are supported by evidence, and they get results. Myths and faiths are not and do not.

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.

The coverage is the war. If there were no coverage, there'd be no war. Yes, the newsmen and the mediamen around the world are actually the fighters, not the soldiers anymore.

The psychotherapist ... tries to help the individual to be himself and to go it alone without giving unnecessary offense to his community, to be in the world (of social convention) but not of the world.

The Pythagoreans made kindness to beasts a training in humanity and pity.

We have a tendency to overcome any strong tension between desire and impotence by depreciating or denying the positive value of the desired object.

In the army, capitalist development leads to the extension of obligatory military service to the reduction of the time of service and consequently to a material approach to a popular militia. But all of this takes place under the form of modern militarism in which the domination of the people by the militarist State and the class character of the State manifest themselves most clearly.

It is the fantasy of seizing reality live that continues-ever since Narcissus bent over his spring. Surprising the real in order to immobilize it, suspending the real in the expiration of its double. You bend over the hologram like God over his creature: only God has this power of passing through walls, through people, and finding Himself immaterially in the beyond. We dream of passing through ourselves and of finding ourselves in the beyond: the day when your holographic double will be there in space, eventually moving and talking, you will have realized this miracle. Of course, it will no longer be a dream, so its charm will be lost.

All things are changing; and thou thyself art in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction and the whole universe to.

There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.

I have wanted them to have this simple definition to read again and again so they know: Feminism is a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.

The living have never shown me how to live.

The capacity to give one's attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. Warmth of heart, impulsiveness, pity are not enough.

To imagine that Caesar aspired to do something in the way Alexander did it - and this is what almost all historians have believed - is definitely to give up trying to understand him. Caesar is very nearly the opposite of Alexander. ...[I]t is not merely a universal kingdom that Caesar has in view. His purpose is a deeper one. He wants a Roman empire which does not live on Rome, but on the periphery, on the provinces, and this implies the complete supersession of the City-State. It implies a State in which the most diverse peoples collaborate, in regard to which all feel solidarity.

The Divine light is always in man, presenting itself to the senses and to the comprehension, but man rejects it.

All things are subject to decay and change.

Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.

Water is the first principle of everything.

..If you are troubled by external circumstances, it is not the circumstances that trouble you, but your own perception of them - and they are in your power to change at any time.

If the true is what is grounded, then the ground is not true, nor yet false.

The age of philosophy in the sense again that we are confronted more and more often with philosophical problems at an everyday level. It is not that you withdraw from daily life into a world of philosophical contemplation. On the contrary, you cannot find your way around daily life itself without answering certain philosophical questions. It is a unique time when everyone is, in a way, forced to be some kind of philosopher.

The State's behavior is violence, and it calls its violence "law"; that of the individual, "crime." The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.

Men are never so likely to settle a question rightly as when they discuss it freely.

That is a long word: forever!

... it may be hoped that the white population of the world will soon cease to increase. The Asiatic races will be longer, and the negroes still longer, before their birth rate falls sufficiently to make their numbers stable without help of war and pestilence. But it is to be hoped that the religious prejudices which have hitherto hampered the spread of birth control will die out, and that ... the whole world will learn not to be unduly prolific. Until that happens, the benefits aimed at by socialism can only be partially realized, and the less prolific races will have to defend themselves against the more prolific by methods which are disgusting even if they are necessary.

Since it is difficult to approve the reasons people invoke, each time we leave one of our 'fellow men', the question which comes to mind is invariably the same: how does he keep from killing himself?

Resignation as to knowledge of the world is for me not an irretrievable plunge into a scepticism which leaves us to drift about in life like a derelict vessel. I see in it that effort of honesty which we must venture to make in order to arrive at the serviceable world-view which hovers within sight. Every world-view which fails to start from resignation in regard to knowledge is artificial and a mere fabrication, for it rests upon an inadmissible interpretation of the universe.

The wise through excess of wisdom is made a fool.

All the seemingly positive valuations and judgments of ressentiment are hidden devaluations and negations.

To keep our eyes open longer were but to set our Antipodes. The Huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first sleep in Persia. But who can be drowsy at that hour which freed us from everlasting sleep? or have slumbering thoughts at that time, when sleep itself must end, and as some conjecture all shall awake again?

At midday the daily food of all Spaniards was the puchero or cocido, as the dish is really called which the foreigners call pot-pourri or olla podrida. This contains principally yellow chick-peas, with a little bacon, some potatoes or other vegetables and normally also small pieces of beef or sausage, all boiled in one pot at a very slow fire; the liquid of the same makes the substantial broth that is served first.

My love, Alcibiades, which I hardly like to confess, would long ago have passed away, as I flatter myself, if I saw you loving your good things, or thinking that you ought to pass life in the enjoyment of them. Socrates speaking to Alcibiades

In limitations he first shows himself the master,And the law can only bring us freedom.

How many disappointments are conducive to bitterness? One or a thousand, depending on the subject.

Man's biological weakness is the condition of human culture.

The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.

Count all wickedness foreign and alien.

It is a conceded fact that woman is being reared as a sex commodity, and yet she is kept in absolute ignorance of the meaning and importance of sex.

If all things are in common among friends, the most precious is Wisdom. What can Juno give which thou canst not receive from Wisdom? What mayest thou admire in Venus which thou mayest not also contemplate in Wisdom? Her beauty is not small, for the lord of all things taketh delight in her. Her I have loved and diligently sought from my youth up.

Why don't I kill myself? If I knew exactly what keeps me from doing so, I should have no more questions to ask myself since I should have answered them all.

When I was a student I was assigned "Mythologies" and "A Lover's Discourse," by Roland Barthes, and felt at once that something momentous had happened to me, that I had met a writer who had changed my course in life somehow; and looking back now, I think he did.

The art of persuasion consists as much in that of pleasing as in that of convincing, so much more are men governed by caprice than by reason!

If you are to be kept right, you must possess either good friends or red-hot enemies. The one will warn you, the other will expose you.

It was a basic Confucian principle that "it is man who makes truth great, not truth which makes man great." For this reason, "humanness" or "human-heartedness" (jen) was always felt to be superior to "righteousness" (i), since man himself is greater than any idea which he may invent. There are times when men's passions are much more trustworthy than their principles.

Athuroglossos is characterized by..: (1) When you have "a mouth like a running spring," you cannot distinguish those occasions when you should speak from those when you should remain silent; or that which must be said from that which must remain unsaid; or the circumstances and situations where speech is required from those where one ought to remain silent. (2) As Plutarch notes... you have no regard for the value of logos, for rational discourse as a means of gaining access to truth.