Marriage, a market which has nothing free but the entrance.

Frazer's account of the magical and religious views of mankind is unsatisfactory; it makes these views look like errors.

Fortune is like glass-the brighter the glitter, the more easily broken.

Shame on the soul, to falter on the road of life while the body still perseveres.

Human rights are not just cultural or legal constructions, as fashionable western relativists are fond of claiming. They are universal values. To deny the benefits of the new regime of rights to other cultures is to patronise them in a way that is reminiscent of the colonial era. If the new regime on torture is good enough for the US, who can say that it is not good for everyone?

There is in Shaw, as in Gurdjieff and Nietzsche, a recognition of the immense effort of Will that is necessary to express even a little freedom, that places them beside Pascal and St. Augustine as religious thinkers. Their view is saved from pessimism only by its mystical recognition of the possibilities of pure Will, freed from the entanglements of automatism.

A great affliction of all Philistines is that idealities afford them no entertainment, but to escape from boredom they are always in need of realities.

What cannot be imagined cannot even be talked about.

Sight-seeing is the art of disappointment.

A person who already displays ... cruelty to animals is also no less hardened towards men. We can already know the human heart, even in regard to animals.

since our leading men think themselves in a seventh heaven, if there are bearded mullets in their fish-ponds that will come to hand for food, and neglect everything else, do not you think that I am doing no mean service if I secure that those who have the power, should not have the will, to do any harm?

Isolated material particles are abstractions, their properties being definable and observable only through their interaction with other systems.

Besides, we should never attempt to balance anybody's misery against somebody else's happiness.

I tell you in truth: all men are Prophets or else God does not exist.

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.

A man might say, "The things that are in the world are what God has made. ... Why should I not love what God has made?" ...Suppose, my brethren, a man should make for his betrothed a ring, and she should prefer the ring given her to the betrothed who made it for her, would not her heart be convicted of infidelity? ... God has given you all these things: therefore, love him who made them.

A man really writes for an audience of about ten persons. Of course if others like it, that is clear gain. But if those ten are satisfied, he is content.

Operational analysis ... cannot raise the decisive question whether the consent itself was not the work of manipulation-a question for which the actual state of affairs provides ample justification. The analysis cannot raise it because it would transcend its terms toward transitive meaning-toward a concept of democracy which would reveal the democratic election as a rather limited democratic process. Precisely such a non-operational concept is the one rejected by the authors as "unrealistic" because it defines democracy on too articulate a level as the clear-cut control of representation by the electorate-popular control as popular sovereignty.

To be or not to be is not the question where transcendence is concerned. The statement of being's other, of the otherwise than being, claims to state a difference over and beyond that which separates being from nothingness - the very difference of the beyond, the difference of transcendence.

From Antisthenes: It is royal to do good and be abused.

Existence is illusory and it is eternal.

It was these Romans who reunited in one State the Culture which had now been produced by the intermixture of different races, and thereby completed the period of Ancient Time, and closed the simple course of Ancient Civilization. With respect to its influence on Universal History, this nation, more than any other, was the blind and unconscious instrument for the furtherance of a higher World-Plan; after having formed itself, by its internal des tiny indicated above, into a most fit and proper instrument for that purpose.

That by any series of changes a protozoon should ever become a mammal, seems to those who are not familiar with zoology, and who have not seen how clear becomes the relationship between the simplest and the most complex forms when intermediate forms are examined, a very grotesque notion. Habitually, looking at things rather in their statical aspect than in their dynamical aspect, they never realize the fact that, by small increments of modification, any amount of modification may in time be generated.

Since space is continuous, it follows that there must be an immediate community of feeling between parts of mind infinitesimally close together. Without this, I believe it would have been impossible for any co-ordination to be established in the action of the nerve-matter of one brain.

Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program. Unsourced variant: Evolution is not a fact. Evolution doesn't even qualify as a theory or as a hypothesis. It is a metaphysical research program, and it is not really testable science.

To fall into mere unreasoning deliquium of love and admiration, was not good; but such unreasoning, nay irrational supercilious no-love at all is perhaps still worse!-It is a thing forever changing, this of Hero-worship: different in each age, difficult to do well in any age. Indeed, the heart of the whole business of the age, one may say, is to do it well.

In Lenin I honor a man, who in total sacrifice of his own person has committed his entire energy to realizing social justice. I do not find his methods advisable. One thing is certain, however: men like him are the guardians and renewers [Erneuerer] of mankind's conscience.

So nigh is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When Duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.

Faith is not in power but in truth.

The God of the Christians is a father who makes much of his apples, and very little of his children.

We aspire not to equality but to domination. Countries inhabited by foreign races must become again countries of serfs, farm laborers, and factory workers. The goal is not to suppress inequities, but, rather, to amplify them and to make of them a matter of course.

It is a great art to saunter.

If there is anything that we wish to change in the child, we should first examine it and see whether it is not something that could better be changed in ourselves.

We plant trees, we build stone houses, we redeem the waste, we make prospective laws, we found colleges and hospitals, for remote generations.

Fools, art is a heavy task, more heavy than gold crowns;it's far more difficult to match firm words than armies,they're disciplined troops, unconquered, to be placed in rhythm,the mind's most mighty foe, and not disperse in air.I'd give, believe me, a whole land for one good song,for I know well that only words, that words alone,like the high mountains, have no fear of age or death.

When Fortune is on our side, popular favor bears her company.

If the task of philosophy is to break the domination of words over the human mind, then my concept notation, being developed for these purposes, can be a useful instrument for philosophers. I believe the cause of logic has been advanced already by the invention of this concept notation.

There is no more consensus on what justice means than there is on the character of the good. If anything, there is less. Among the virtues, justice is one of the most shaped by convention. For that reason it is among the most changeable.

Bad times, hard times, this is what people keep saying; but let us live well, and times shall be good. We are the times: Such as we are, such are the times.

The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened.

Literature is idiosyncratic arrangements in horizontal lines in only twenty-six symbols, ten arabic numbers, and about eight punctuation marks.

Irons and the unbreathable air of this world strip us of everything, except the freedom to kill ourselves; and this freedom grants us a strength and pride to triumph over the loads which overwhelm us.

As a violin string or a harpsichord key vibrates and gives forth sound, so the cerebral fibres, struck by waves of sound, are stimulated to render or repeat the words that strike them.