Justice… is a kind of compact not to harm or be harmed.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

Reverence for life is the highest court of appeal.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

States are not moral agents.

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Words are loaded pistols.

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual. So slavery, for example, or other forms of tyranny, are inherently monstrous. The individuals participating in them may be the nicest guys you can imagine.

Expecting is the greatest impediment to living. In anticipation of tomorrow, it loses today.

All our knowledge has its origins in our perceptions.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.

To know yet to think that one does not know is best; Not to know yet to think that one knows will lead to difficulty.

There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

The pursuit of truth does not permit violence on one’s opponent.

We want to answer this classical question, who am I? So I think that most of our works are for art, or whatever we do, including science or religion, tried to answer that question.

It’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

I am afraid we must make the world honest before we can honestly say to our children that honesty is the best policy.

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

I am a part of everything that I have read.

Our philosophy is that we care about people first.

The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever will be born must destroy a world.

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

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

One’s philosophy is not best expressed in words; it is expressed in the choices one makes… and the choices we make are ultimately our responsibility.

After your death you will be what you were before your birth.

Wonder is the feeling of the philosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder.

All thought must, directly or indirectly, by way of certain characters, relate ultimately to intuitions, and therefore, with us, to sensibility, because in no other way can an object be given to us.

I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong.

The way up and the way down are one and the same.

A man’s character is his guardian divinity.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.

What then do you call your soul? What idea have you of it? You cannot of yourselves, without revelation, admit the existence within you of anything but a power unknown to you of feeling and thinking.

Experience is the child of thought, and thought is the child of action.

All who think cannot but see there is a sanction like that of religion which binds us in partnership in the serious work of the world.

He that does good to another does good also to himself.

We call first truths those we discover after all the others.

Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having.

Conservatism discards Prescription, shrinks from Principle, disavows Progress; having rejected all respect for antiquity, it offers no redress for the present, and makes no preparation for the future.

There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

Death may be the greatest of all human blessings.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

Those who commit injustice bear the greatest burden.

Man the individual consoles himself for his passing with the thought of the offspring or the works which he leaves behind.

Simplicity is the most deceitful mistress that ever betrayed man.

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

Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.

We think the Dred Scott decision is erroneous. We know the court that made it has often overruled its own decisions, and we shall do what we can to have it overrule this.

We are born believing. A man bears beliefs as a tree bears apples.

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.

Opinion is the medium between knowledge and ignorance.

It is better to die than to preserve this life by incurring disgrace. The loss of life causes but a moment’s grief, but disgrace brings grief every day of one’s life.

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.

Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity.

I don’t think that faith, whatever you’re being faithful about, really can be scientifically explained. And I don’t want to explain this whole life business through truth, science. There’s so much mystery. There’s so much awe.

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartanlike as to put to rout all that was not life.

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

No body can be healthful without exercise, neither natural body nor politic, and certainly, to a kingdom or estate, a just and honourable war is the true exercise.

Nothing is more terrible than activity without insight.