Society can overlook murder, adultery or swindling; it never forgives preaching of a new gospel.

We’ve arranged a civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology.

This is a wonderful planet, and it is being completely destroyed by people who have too much money and power and no empathy.

Truth is certainly a branch of morality and a very important one to society.

Young men soon give, and soon forget, affronts; old age is slow in both.

Justice is itself the great standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.

Drones overall will be more impactful than I think people recognize, in positive ways to help society.

There is no king who has not had a slave among his ancestors, and no slave who has not had a king among his.

Any government that supports, protects or harbours terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent and equally guilty of terrorist crimes.

There is no injustice in the grace of God. God is as just when He forgives a believer as when He casts a sinner into hell.

The love of the family, the love of one person can heal. It heals the scars left by a larger society. A massive, powerful society.

I find myself hoping a total end of all the unhappy divisions of mankind by party-spirit, which at best is but the madness of many for the gain of a few.

When I hear a man preach, I like to see him act as if he were fighting bees.

Like every other good thing in this world, leisure and culture have to be paid for. Fortunately, however, it is not the leisured and the cultured who have to pay.

The eyes of others our prisons; their thoughts our cages.

While victimhood in America is exalted, I don’t think our veterans should join those ranks.

This world of ours… must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

No one would talk much in society if they knew how often they misunderstood others.

I am neither bitter nor cynical but I do wish there was less immaturity in political thinking.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

The things that will destroy America are prosperity-at-any-price, peace-at-any-price, safety-first instead of duty-first, the love of soft living, and the get-rich-quick theory of life.

Wherever there is a settled society, religion is necessary; the laws cover manifest crimes, and religion covers secret crimes.

I do think that a minister who can preach a sermon without addressing sinners does not know how to preach.

All ideologies are idiotic, whether religious or political, for it is conceptual thinking, the conceptual word, which has so unfortunately divided man.

When a man laughs at his troubles he loses a great many friends. They never forgive the loss of their prerogative.

Democratic societies are unfit for the publication of such thunderous revelations as I am in the habit of making.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

There are techniques of Buddhism, such as meditation, that anyone can adopt. And, of course, there are Christian monks and nuns who already use Buddhist methods in order to develop their devotion, compassion, and ability to forgive.

A particularly beautiful woman is a source of terror. As a rule, a beautiful woman is a terrible disappointment.

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

Measures must always in a progressive society be held superior to men, who are after all imperfect instruments, working for their fulfilment.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

It is very nearly impossible… to become an educated person in a country so distrustful of the independent mind.

Evangelicals can’t be closely identified with any particular party or person. We have to stand in the middle, to preach to all the people, right and left.

I’ve been known to preach.

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be absolutely equal.

The environment that we call society is created by past generations; we accept it, as it helps us to maintain our greed, possessiveness, illusion.

In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.

We are so conformist; nobody is thinking. We are all sucking up stuff; we have been trained to be consumers, and we are all consuming far too much.

A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.

We are the only real aristocracy in the world: the aristocracy of money.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

It is far more difficult to murder a phantom than a reality.

Let reverence for the laws be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap – let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in almanacs; let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.

In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress ‚suspects.‘

Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends?

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

Time heals griefs and quarrels, for we change and are no longer the same persons. Neither the offender nor the offended are any more themselves.

Anyone who knows history, particularly the history of Europe, will, I think, recognize that the domination of education or of government by any one particular religious faith is never a happy arrangement for the people.

The very word ‚secrecy‘ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths, and to secret proceedings.

You can bear your own faults, and why not a fault in your wife?

Science may have found a cure for most evils; but it has found no remedy for the worst of them all – the apathy of human beings.

If you know how to read, you have a complete education about life, then you know how to vote within a democracy. But if you don’t know how to read, you don’t know how to decide. That’s the great thing about our country – we’re a democracy of readers, and we should keep it that way.

Good humor is one of the best articles of dress one can wear in society.

A well-instructed people alone can be permanently a free people.

The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground.

The society based on production is only productive, not creative.

We are right to take alarm at the first experiment upon our liberties.

The world is all the richer for having a devil in it, so long as we keep our foot upon his neck.