It is a strange desire, to seek power, and to lose liberty; or to seek power over others, and to lose power over a man’s self.

Facts, like people, want to be free – and when they’re free, liberty is usually around the corner.

Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment.

The impossible often has a kind of integrity which the merely improbable lacks.

You are a little soul carrying around a corpse.

Self-control means wanting to be effective at some random point in the infinite radiations of my spiritual existence.

At his best, man is the noblest of all animals; separated from law and justice he is the worst.

Force does not constitute right… obedience is due only to legitimate powers.

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

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.

Convictions are more dangerous foes of truth than lies.

To die for an idea; it is unquestionably noble. But how much nobler it would be if men died for ideas that were true!

Silence is the mother of truth.

Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?

The abdomen is the reason why man does not readily take himself to be a god.

It is not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, that the lover of knowledge is reluctant to step into its waters.

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.

I think that all things, in their way, reflect heavenly truth, the imagination not least.

There are few things that we so unwillingly give up, even in advanced age, as the supposition that we still have the power of ingratiating ourselves with the fair sex.

To keep your character intact you cannot stoop to filthy acts. It makes it easier to stoop the next time.

Power is not sufficient evidence of truth.

Nothing can be beautiful which is not true.

Each piece, or part, of the whole of nature is always merely an approximation to the complete truth, or the complete truth so far as we know it. In fact, everything we know is only some kind of approximation because we know that we do not know all the laws as yet.

The term ‚globalisation‘ is conventionally used to refer to the specific form of investor-rights integration designed by wealth and power, for their own interests.

I have a fantasy where Ted Turner is elected President but refuses because he doesn’t want to give up power.

One must know oneself. If this does not serve to discover truth, it at least serves as a rule of life and there is nothing better.

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

We should not be so taken up in the search for truth, as to neglect the needful duties of active life; for it is only action that gives a true value and commendation to virtue.

It is the privilege of the gods to want nothing, and of godlike men to want little.

Liberal: a power worshipper without power.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

There is the good and the bad, the great and the low, the just and the unjust. I swear to you that all that will never change.

But if nothing but soul, or in soul mind, is qualified to count, it is impossible for there to be time unless there is soul, but only that of which time is an attribute, i.e. if change can exist without soul.

Power does not change you, it unmasks you.

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty, and all forms of human life.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not.

Chaos often breeds life, when order breeds habit.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.

And what, Socrates, is the food of the soul? Surely, I said, knowledge is the food of the soul.

We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts, we make the world.

This young century will be liberty’s century.

I have finally decided to write my book on the spiritual life. I mean to put down as simply as possible the sort of ascetical or mystical teaching that I have been living and preaching so long. I call it ‚Le Milieu Divin,‘ but I am being careful to include nothing esoteric and the minimum of explicit philosophy.

The 21st century is going to be the American century. Because we lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. That is the history of the journey of America.

This land is your land and this land is my land, sure, but the world is run by those that never listen to music anyway.

Nothing can have value without being an object of utility.

You can have no dominion greater or less than that over yourself.

Falsehood has an infinity of combinations, but truth has only one mode of being.

The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing.

Have you ever thought how humiliating and distressing it was to be placed upon a sphere? For friendship it is a boon never to be able to be further apart than the antipodes. But suppose that you are leaving together to go on and on; it is impossible. To go beyond a certain point is to return to where you began.

In Christianity neither morality nor religion come into contact with reality at any point.

Our life is made by the death of others.

Having nothing, nothing can he lose.

It appears to be a law that you cannot have a deep sympathy with both man and nature.

You may be able to read Bernard Shaw’s plays, you may be able to quote Shakespeare or Voltaire or some new philosopher; but if you in yourself are not intelligent, if you are not creative, what is the point of this education?

Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.

I never resist temptation, because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.

Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere.

Nothing fortifies scepticism more than the fact that there are some who are not sceptics; if all were so, they would be wrong.

If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.

I have always held firmly to the thought that each one of us can do a little to bring some portion of misery to an end.