As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.

In that film, the man and the part met. As far as I’m concerned, that part is Greg’s for life. I’ve had many, many offers to turn it into musicals, into TV or stage plays, but I’ve always refused.

I hate books; they only teach us to talk about things we know nothing about.

I’m convinced that no one can amount to a damn in the arts if he becomes sweetly reasonable, seeing all sides of a picture, forgiving all sins.

Beauty is the greatest seducer of man.

I’m afraid that reason will triumph and that the world will become a place where anyone who doesn’t fit that will become unnecessary.

It’s easier to aim to please and say what others want to hear than to form an opinion and fight for it, even if it means taking a risk or losing your job.

Faith… must be enforced by reason… when faith becomes blind it dies.

War contains so much folly, as well as wickedness, that much is to be hoped from the progress of reason.

It was not a religion that attacked us that September day. It was al-Qaeda. We will not sacrifice the liberties we cherish or hunker down behind walls of suspicion and mistrust.

I like a man who grins when he fights.

The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

It’s not simply to say, ‚My colleagues are wrong, and I would do it this way,‘ but the greatest dissents do become court opinions.

Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost.

Writing means sharing. It’s part of the human condition to want to share things – thoughts, ideas, opinions.

Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.

A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good.

All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason. There is nothing higher than reason.

Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding.

Freedom is a man’s natural power of doing what he pleases, so far as he is not prevented by force or law.

When I left Dortmund, I said it’s not important what people think when you come in but what they think when you leave.

Your true traveller finds boredom rather agreeable than painful. It is the symbol of his liberty – his excessive freedom. He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.

From a purely positivist point of view, man is the most mysterious and disconcerting of all the objects met with by science.

Arguments are extremely vulgar, for everyone in good society holds exactly the same opinion.

If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins.

Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.

I don’t see that my majority opinions are going to be undone.

The world, we are told, was made especially for man – a presumption not supported by all the facts. A numerous class of men are painfully astonished whenever they find anything, living or dead, in all God’s universe, which they cannot eat or render in some way what they call useful to themselves.

Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‚within the limits of the law‘ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.

Nothing is more gratifying to the mind of man than power or dominion.

Man, unlike anything organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments.

The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.

There are definitely people who disagree with certain creative decisions you make. Pleasing everyone is pretty hard.

A woman may very well form a friendship with a man, but for this to endure, it must be assisted by a little physical antipathy.

The generous Critic fann’d the Poet’s fire, And taught the world with reason to admire.

There is, indeed, nothing that so much seduces reason from vigilance, as the thought of passing life with an amiable woman.

A clever man commits no minor blunders.

The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man.

We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?

Some kinds of animals burrow in the ground; others do not. Some animals are nocturnal, as the owl and the bat; others use the hours of daylight. There are tame animals and wild animals. Man and the mule are always tame; the leopard and the wolf are invariably wild, and others, as the elephant, are easily tamed.

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

A round man cannot be expected to fit in a square hole right away. He must have time to modify his shape.

Opposition may become sweet to a man when he has christened it persecution.

I believe in only one thing: liberty; but I do not believe in liberty enough to want to force it upon anyone.

A man makes you feel important – makes you glad you are a woman.

Dictatorship naturally arises out of democracy, and the most aggravated form of tyranny and slavery out of the most extreme liberty.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

Every formula of every religion has in this age of reason, to submit to the acid test of reason and universal assent.

The effect of liberty to individuals is that they may do what they please: we ought to see what it will please them to do, before we risk congratulations.

If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government to the utmost.

I would like to express the thoughts of a man who, having finally penetrated the partitions and ceilings of little countries, little coteries, little sects, rises above all these categories and finds himself a child and citizen of the Earth.

Nothing is divine but what is agreeable to reason.

A man may die, nations may rise and fall, but an idea lives on.

It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.

Desire is the essence of a man.

We are a nation founded as a rebuke to tyranny. A nation of revolutionaries who refused sovereign reign from afar. Hear me – we’re a nation that says give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. A nation built on our differences, guided by the belief that we’re all created equal.

We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.

There are two kinds of people one can call reasonable: those who serve God with all their heart because they know him, and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him.

If you think you can slander a woman into loving you, or a man into voting for you, try it till you are satisfied.

Learned Institutions ought to be favorite objects with every free people. They throw that light over the public mind which is the best security against crafty and dangerous encroachments on the public liberty.