Libertarian socialism is properly to be regarded as the inheritor of the liberal ideals of the Enlightenment.

Let my skin and sinews and bones dry up, together with all the flesh and blood of my body! I welcome it! But I will not move from this spot until I have attained the supreme and final wisdom.

The highest revelation is that God is in every man.

But by reading them again and again finally I was able to grasp the essential part. What emotion, enthusiasm, enlightenment and confidence they communicated to me! I wept for joy.

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.

What we all want is public safety. We don’t want rhetoric that’s framed through ideology.

Those who today always look for disciplinarian solutions, those who long for an exaggerated doctrinal ‚security,‘ those who stubbornly try to recover a past that no longer exists – they have a static and inward-directed view of things. In this way, faith becomes an ideology among other ideologies.

I consider anybody a twerp who hasn’t read ‚Democracy in America‘ by Alexis de Tocqueville. There can never be a better book than that one on the strengths and vulnerabilities inherent in our form of government.

You can’t put democracy and freedom back into a box.

Of those beings who live in ignorance, shut up and confined, as it were, in an egg, I have first broken the eggshell of ignorance and alone in the universe obtained the most exalted, universal Buddhahood.

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

I’m not a conservative of any kind.

The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion’s roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.

For as the eyes of bats are to the blaze of day, so is the reason in our soul to the things which are by nature most evident of all.

Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day.

A radical generally meant a man who thought he could somehow pull up the root without affecting the flower. A conservative generally meant a man who wanted to conserve everything except his own reason for conserving anything.

Nationalism is power hunger tempered by self-deception.

If it is surely the means to the highest end we know, can any work be humble or disgusting? Will it not rather be elevating as a ladder, the means by which we are translated?

A Conservative Government is an organized hypocrisy.

I became a Communist by studying capitalist political economy, and when I had some understanding of that problem, it actually seemed to me so absurd, so irrational, so inhuman, that I simply began to elaborate on my own formulas for production and distribution.

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force.

To penetrate and dissipate these clouds of darkness, the general mind must be strengthened by education.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

Communism to me is one-third practice and two-thirds explanation.

You have your ideology and I have mine.

To enjoy good health, to bring true happiness to one’s family, to bring peace to all, one must first discipline and control one’s own mind. If a man can control his mind he can find the way to Enlightenment, and all wisdom and virtue will naturally come to him.

I’m opposed to fundamentalism in any form.

A reactionary is a somnambulist walking backwards.

I say there is no darkness but ignorance.

The light which puts out our eyes is darkness to us. Only that day dawns to which we are awake. There is more day to dawn. The sun is but a morning star.

Liberalism is totalitarianism with a human face.

Enlightenment is always there. Small enlightenment will bring great enlightenment. If you breathe in and are aware that you are alive – that you can touch the miracle of being alive – then that is a kind of enlightenment.

Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.

I’m interested in what motivates individuals to participate in atrocious acts to support their ideological identification.

We know what works. Freedom Works. We know what’s right. Freedom is right.

What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?

Without stirring abroad, One can know the whole world; Without looking out of the window One can see the way of heaven. The further one goes The less one knows.

The universities are available only to those who share my revolutionary beliefs.

I have something in common with Nazis in that I am opposed to the radical Left. And when you oppose the radical Left, you end up being a part of a much larger group that includes Nazis in it.

When you make the finding yourself – even if you’re the last person on Earth to see the light – you’ll never forget it.

Religion is the opium of the masses.

There is no darkness but ignorance.

I cannot read a single word of the Hindoos without being elevated.

Every revolutionary ends up either by becoming an oppressor or a heretic.

In Republics, the great danger is, that the majority may not sufficiently respect the rights of the minority.

Not when truth is dirty, but when it is shallow, does the enlightened man dislike to wade into its waters.

The eyes of the soul of the multitudes are unable to endure the vision of the divine.

It’s in the best interest of the radical left types – best psychological and strategic interest – to refuse to admit to the possibility that reasonable people can object to their ideological staff. Because if reasonable people objected, that would imply that their ideological stance is not reasonable.

My purpose is to help people look at themselves and begin to shift their concepts. Remember, we are not our country, our race, or religion. We are eternal spirits. Seeing ourselves as spiritual beings without label is a way to transform the world and reach a sacred place for all of humanity.

Anti-Americanism is a pure totalitarian concept. The very notion is idiotic.

I am not a communist and neither is the revolutionary movement.

All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.

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.

He who gives away shall have real gain. He who subdues himself shall be free; he shall cease to be a slave of passions. The righteous man casts off evil, and by rooting out lust, bitterness, and illusion do we reach Nirvana.

Tyranny naturally arises out of democracy.

Sexuality is one of the ways that we become enlightened, actually, because it leads us to self-knowledge.

I spent my life studying communism and Soviet systems.

Obviously, I’m no fan of the radical left.

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

Ultimately, education in its real sense is the pursuit of truth. It is an endless journey through knowledge and enlightenment.

There will never be a really free and enlightened State until the State comes to recognize the individual as a higher and independent power, from which all its own power and authority are derived, and treats him accordingly.