In default of any other...

In default of any other proof, the thumb would convince me of the existence of a God.

He picked up the lemons...

He picked up the lemons that Fate had sent him and started a lemonade-stand.

Slavery is disheartening; but Nature...

Slavery is disheartening; but Nature is not so helpless but it can rid itself of every last wrong. But the spasms of nature are centuries and ages and will tax the faith of short-lived men. Slowly, slowly the Avenger comes, but comes surely. The proverbs of the nations affirm these delays, but affirm the arrival. They say, "God may consent, but not forever." The delay of the Divine Justice — this was the meaning and soul of the Greek Tragedy, — this was the soul of their religion.

The characteristic activity of science...

The characteristic activity of science is not construction, but induction. The more often something has occurred in the past, the more certain that it will in all the future. Knowledge relates solely to what is and to its recurrence. New forms of being, especially those arising from the historical activity of man, lie beyond empiricist theory. Thoughts which are not simply carried over from the prevailing pattern of consciousness, but arise from the aims and resolves of the individual, in short, all historical tendencies that reach beyond what is present and recurrent, do not belong to the domain of science.

The notion of nothingness is...

The notion of nothingness is not characteristic of laboring humanity: those who toil have neither time nor inclination to weigh their dust; they resign themselves to the difficulties or the doltishness of fate; they hope: hope is a slave's virtue.

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

A physical theory reputed to...

A physical theory reputed to be satisfactory by the sectarians of one metaphysical school will be rejected by the partisans of another school.

Science may be described as...

Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification — the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.

The greatest scientist who ever...

The greatest scientist who ever lived was Isaac Newton...[about Principia Mathematica] By all odds it's the greatest scientific book ever written or ever will be written, I think.

One machine can do the...

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

People do not deserve to...

People do not deserve to have good writing, they are so pleased with bad.

In the world of action,...

In the world of action, we know that it is disastrous to treat animals or human beings as though they were stocks and stones. Why should we suppose this treatment to be any less mistaken in the world of ideas?

Philosophy: impersonal anxiety; refuge among...

Philosophy: impersonal anxiety; refuge among anemic ideas.

The quantity of action is...

The quantity of action is the product of the mass of the bodies times their speed and the distance they travel. When a body is transported from one place to another, the action is proportional to the mass of the body, to its speed and to the distance over which it is transported.

There is no history of...

There is no history of mankind, there is only an indefinite number of histories of all kinds of aspects of human life. And one of these is the history of political power. This is elevated into the history of the world. But this, I hold, is an offence against every decent conception of mankind. It is hardly better than to treat the history of embezzlement or of robbery or of poisoning as the history of mankind. For the history of power politics is nothing but the history of international crime and mass murder (including it is true, some of the attempts to suppress them). This history is taught in schools, and some of the greatest criminals are extolled as heroes.

Newton said that he made...

Newton said that he made his discoveries by 'intending' his mind on the subject; no doubt truly. But to equal his success one must have the mind which he 'intended.' Forty lesser men might have intended their minds till they cracked, without any like result. It would be idle either to affirm or to deny that the last half-century has produced men of science of the calibre of Newton. It is sufficient that it can show a few capacities of the first rank, competent not only to deal profitably with the inheritance bequeathed by their scientific forefathers, but to pass on to their successors physical truths of a higher order than any yet reached by the human race. And if they have succeeded as Newton succeeded, it is because they have sought truth as he sought it, with no other object than the finding it.

The ineffable joy of forgiving...

The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods.

In this distribution of functions,...

In this distribution of functions, the scholar is the delegated intellect. In the right state, he is, Man Thinking. In the degenerate state, when the victim of society, he tends to become a mere thinker, or, still worse, the parrot of other men's thinking.

The advantage of meditating upon...

The advantage of meditating upon life and death is being able to say anything at all about them.

It is indifferent to me...

It is indifferent to me where I am to begin, for there shall I return again.

If there were no internal...

If there were no internal propensity to unite, even at a prodigiously rudimentary level—indeed in the molecule itself—it would be physically impossible for love to appear higher up, with us, in hominized form. . . . Driven by the forces of love, the fragments of the world seek each other so that the world may come into being.

I am a rationalist. ...I...

I am a rationalist. ...I mean ...[I] wish... to understand the world, and to learn by arguing with others. (...I do not say a rationalist holds the mistaken theory that men are... rational.)

Dr. Pemberton tells us a...

Dr. Pemberton tells us a that the first thoughts, which gave rise to Newton's Principia, occurred to him when he had retired from Cambridge into Lincolnshire, in 1666, on account of the plague. Voltaire had his information from Mrs. Catharine Barton, Newton's favourite niece, who married Conduitt, a member of the Royal Society, and one of his intimate friends: from having spent a great portion of her life in his society, she was good authority for such an anecdote, and she related that some fruit, falling from a tree, was the accidental cause of this direction to Newton's speculations.

The ultimate notion of right...

The ultimate notion of right is that which tends to the universal good; and when one's acting in a certain manner has this tendency, he has a right thus to act.

It is easy to see...

It is easy to see that the existing generation are conspiring with a beneficence, which, in its working for coming generations, sacrifices the passing one, which infatuates the most selfish men to act against their private interest for the public welfare. We build railroads, we know not for what or for whom; but one thing is certain, that we who build will receive the very smallest share of benefit. Benefit will accrue; they are essential to the country, but that will be felt not until we are no longer countrymen. We do the like in all matters: — 'Man's heart the Almighty to the Future setBy secret and inviolable springs.'

In our fear, we are...

In our fear, we are victims of an aggression of the Future.

The great novelty in the...

The great novelty in the poem of Parmenides is the method of argument. He... asks what is the common of all the views... and he finds... this is the existence of what is not. ...[C]an [this] be thought ...it cannot. If you think... you must think of something. Therefore there is no nothing. Philosophy had not yet learned to make the admission that a thing might be unthinkable and nevertheless exist. Only that can be which can be thought (fr. 5); for thought exists for the sake of what is (fr. 8, 34). ...[I]f we ... allow nothing but what we can understand, we come into direct conflict with the evidence of our senses, ...a world of change and decay. So much the worse for the senses, says Parmenides.

The world, and whatever that...

The world, and whatever that be which we call the heavens, by the vault of which all things are enclosed, we must conceive to be a deity, to be eternal, without bounds, neither created nor subject at any time to destruction. To inquire what is beyond it is no concern of man; nor can the human mind form any conjecture concerning it.

Popper was kind of an...

Popper was kind of an egocentric jerk.

The whole difference between construction...

The whole difference between construction and creation is exactly this: that a thing constructed can only be loved after it is constructed; but a thing created is loved before it exists, as the mother can love the unborn child.

Pass in, pass in, the...

Pass in, pass in, the angels say, In to the upper doors; Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to Paradise By the stairway of surprise.

A people represents not so...

A people represents not so much an aggregate of ideas and theories as of obsessions.

Nothing is more usual and...

Nothing is more usual and more natural for those, who pretend to discover anything new to the world in philosophy and the sciences, than to insinuate the praises of their own systems, by decrying all those, which have been advanced before them. And indeed were they content with lamenting that ignorance, which we still lie under in the most important questions, that can come before the tribunal of human reason, there are few, who have an acquaintance with the sciences, that would not readily agree with them. 'Tis easy for one of judgment and learning, to perceive the weak foundation even of those systems, which have obtained the greatest credit, and have carried their pretensions highest to accurate and profound reasoning. Principles taken upon trust, consequences lamely deduced from them, want of coherence in the parts, and of evidence in the whole, these are every where to be met with in the systems of the most eminent philosophers, and seem to have drawn disgrace upon philosophy itself.

God is not the name...

God is not the name of God, but an opinion about Him.

The Church never said that...

The Church never said that wrongs could not or should not be righted; or that commonwealths could not or should not be made happier; or that it was not worth while to help them in secular and material things; or that it is not a good thing if manners become milder, or comforts more common, or cruelties more rare. But she did say that we must not count on the certainty even of comforts becoming more common or cruelties more rare; as if this were an inevitable social trend towards a sinless humanity; instead of being as it was a mood of man, and perhaps a better mood, possibly to be followed by a worse one. We must not hate humanity, or despise humanity, or refuse to help humanity; but we must not trust humanity; in the sense of trusting a trend in human nature which cannot turn back to bad things.

Parmenides: Just as things in...

Parmenides: Just as things in a picture, when viewed from a distance, appear to be all in one and the same condition and alike.

Whatever limits us we call...

Whatever limits us we call Fate.

We are all secularised anarchists...

We are all secularised anarchists today.

The sense of justice and...

The sense of justice and injustice is not deriv'd from nature, but arises artificially... from education, and human conventions.

Guerrilla ontology The basic technique...

Guerrilla ontology The basic technique of all my books. Ontology is the study of being; the guerrilla approach is to so mix the elements of each book that the reader must decide on each page 'How much of this is real and how much is a put-on?'"

Ce que, finalement, je sais...

Ce que, finalement, je sais de plus sûr sur la morale et les obligations des hommes, c'est au football que je le dois.

Men always talk about the...

Men always talk about the most important things to total strangers. It is because in the total stranger we perceive man himself; the image of God is not disguised by resemblances to an uncle or doubts of the wisdom of a moustache.

There is no one who...

There is no one who ever acts honestly in the administration of states, nor any helper who will save any one who maintains the cause of the just.

Beauty without grace is the...

Beauty without grace is the hook without the bait.

The skeptic is the least...

The skeptic is the least mysterious man in the world, and yet, starting from a certain moment, he no longer belongs to this world.

Physics is to be regarded...

Physics is to be regarded not so much as the study of something a priori given, but rather as the development of methods of ordering and surveying human experience. In this respect our task must be to account for such experience in a manner independent of individual subjective judgement and therefore objective in the sense that it can be unambiguously communicated in ordinary human language.

During such calm sunshine of...

During such calm sunshine of the mind, these spectres of false divinity never make their appearance.

Not all his men may...

Not all his men may sever this,It yields to friends', not monarchs', calls;My whinstone house my castle is— I have my own four walls.

Philip being arbitrator betwixt two...

Philip being arbitrator betwixt two wicked persons, he commanded one to fly out of Macedonia and the other to pursue him.

Each mans spills the drink...

Each mans spills the drink he loves.