From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.

Communism is a religion that is inspired, directed and motivated by the Devil himself who has declared war against Almighty God.

It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.

Trouble brews when we steal from the poor and give to the rich.

The doorstep to the temple of wisdom is a knowledge of our own ignorance.

The value of a principle is the number of things it will explain.

Only the ideas that we really live have any value.

We reached a high point in my opinion with the passage of the civil rights legislation and Martin Luther King’s success and the crusade of others. I think we kind of breathed a sigh of relief as if we had achieved the end of racial discrimination or white supremacy.

Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind is man.

If we cut up beasts simply because they cannot prevent us and because we are backing our own side in the struggle for existence, it is only logical to cut up imbeciles, criminals, enemies, or capitalists for the same reasons.

I call him free who is led solely by reason.

If a man loses his reverence for any part of life, he will lose his reverence for all of life.

If you want to see the true measure of a man, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.

There is no need for temples, no need for complicated philosophies. My brain and my heart are my temples; my philosophy is kindness.

Men create gods after their own image, not only with regard to their form but with regard to their mode of life.

In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination – and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past – are real and must be addressed.

It is right to give every man his due.

Happy is the hearing man; unhappy the speaking man.

Is life worth living? It all depends on the liver.

I am a Christian. That obliges me to be a Communist.

Thus so wretched is man that he would weary even without any cause for weariness… and so frivolous is he that, though full of a thousand reasons for weariness, the least thing, such as playing billiards or hitting a ball, is sufficient enough to amuse him.

Who is rich? He that is content. Who is that? Nobody.

We are not the sum of our possessions.

No man is above the law and no man is below it: nor do we ask any man’s permission when we ask him to obey it.

As soon as you have a language that has a past tense and a future tense you’re going to say, ‚Where did we come from, what happens next?‘ The ability to remember the past helps us plan the future.

In the final analysis, the questions of why bad things happen to good people transmutes itself into some very different questions, no longer asking why something happened, but asking how we will respond, what we intend to do now that it happened.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

There are in fact two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance.

Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!

From wonder into wonder existence opens.

A useless life is an early death.

Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the Infinite.

The foot feels the foot when it feels the ground.

I want to know why the universe exists, why there is something greater than nothing.

I should tie myself to no particular system of society other than of socialism.

There was something undifferentiated and yet complete, which existed before Heaven and Earth. Soundless and formless, it depends on nothing and does not change. It operates everywhere and is free from danger. It may be considered the mother of the universe. I do not know its name; I call it Tao.

It is much more secure to be feared than to be loved.

Nothing cannot exist forever.

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right. Men will believe what they see.

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

Truth is the beginning of every good to the gods, and of every good to man.

Anybody can be specific and obvious. That’s always been the easy way. It’s not that it’s so difficult to be unspecific and less obvious; it’s just that there’s nothing, absolutely nothing, to be specific and obvious about.

A man’s felicity consists not in the outward and visible blessing of fortune, but in the inward and unseen perfections and riches of the mind.

Each thing is of like form from everlasting and comes round again in its cycle.

I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.

To the best of my judgment, I have labored for, and not against, the Union. As I have not felt, so I have not expressed any harsh sentiment towards our Southern brethren. I have constantly declared, as I really believed, the only difference between them and us is the difference of circumstances.

To have no time for philosophy is to be a true philosopher.

One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people’s minds.

There must always remain something that is antagonistic to good.

The time is long overdue to stop looking for progress through racial or ethnic leaders. Such leaders have too many incentives to promote polarizing attitudes and actions that are counterproductive for minorities and disastrous for the country.

The way of fortune is like the milkyway in the sky; which is a number of small stars, not seen asunder, but giving light together: so it is a number of little and scarce discerned virtues, or rather faculties and customs, that make men fortunate.

They call upon us to supply American boys to do the job that Asian boys should do.

Fear is the mother of morality.

In socialism, private property is anathema, and equal distribution of income the first consideration. In capitalism, private property is cardinal, and distribution left to ensue from the play of free contract and selfish interest on that basis, no matter what anomalies it may present.

A black person grows up in this country – and in many places – knowing that racism will be as familiar as salt to the tongue. Also, it can be as dangerous as too much salt. I think that you must struggle for betterment for yourself and for everyone.

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.

Reason is the natural order of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning.

I feel a distaste for hunting, first because of a kind of Buddhist respect for the unity and sacredness of all life, and also because the pursuit of a hare or chamois strikes me as a kind of ‚escape of energy,‘ that is, the expenditure of our effort in an illusory end, one devoid of profit.

We are all born for love. It is the principle of existence, and its only end.

Nine times out of ten, in the arts as in life, there is actually no truth to be discovered; there is only error to be exposed.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.