User:Srnec/Quotes of the Day Archive

Information is the oxygen of the modern age. It seeps through the walls topped by barbed wire, it wafts across the electrified borders. ... The Goliath of totalitarianism will be brought down by the David of the microchip.

The heresies we should fear are those which can be confused with orthodoxy.

The believer in God has to account for the existence of unjust suffering; the atheist has to account for the existence of everything else

Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life, to mind your own business and to work with your hands . . . so that your daily life may win the respect of outsiders and so that you will not be dependent on anybody.

Once...in the wilds of Afghanistan, I lost my corkscrew, and we were forced to live on nothing but food and water for days.

Vulgar feelings and vulgar customs provide the poets with their proper materials.

We should defeat our enemies, not try them. Defeating enemies is necessary; trying enemies is only arrogant.

Unity wherever possible, but truth at all costs.

So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory.

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

The only thing worse than nostalgia is amnesia.

He who abuses his power, deserves to lose his privilege.

Some glad morning when this life is o'er, I'll fly away.

Thanne is it wysdom, as it thynketh me,

To maken vertu of necessitee.

Is it the greater tragedy that in a liberal democracy such as Canada people can be detained on a security certificate and held without a trial, or that they need to be?

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

The good is uncreated; it never could have been otherwise it has in it no shadow of contingency; it lies, as Plato said, on the other side of existence. It is the Rita of the Hindus by which the gods themselves are divine, the Tao of the Chinese from which all realities proceed. But we, favoured beyond the wisest pagans, know what lies beyond existence, what admits no contingencey, what lends divinity to all else, what is the ground of all existence, is not simply a law but a begetting love, a love begotten, and the love which,being between these two, is also immanent in all those who are caught up to share the unity of their self-caused life. God is not merely good, but goodness. . . .

No legal plunder: this is the principle of justice, peace, order, stability, harmony, and logic.

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.

A veces quisiera ser más vieja porque la juventud lleva en sí la imperiosa, la implacable necesidad de relacionarlo todo con el amor...

At times one wishes to be older, because youth carries with it the imperious, the implacable necessity of relating everything to love...

Tired! When you have all eternity to rest in?

One's company, two's a crowd, and three's a party.

During my two terms of office the whole Democratic press, and the morbidly honest and "reformatory" portion of the Republican press, thought it horrible to keep U.S. troops stationed in the Southern States, and when they were called upon to protect the lives of negroes — as much citizens under the Constitution as if their skins were white — the country was scarcely large enough to hold the sound of indignation belched forth by them for some years. Now, however, there is no hesitation about exhausting the whole power of the government to suppress a strike on the slightest intimation that danger threatens.

To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

But the indifference of which I am conscious when I am not impelled to one side rather than to another for want of a reason, is the lowest grade of liberty, and manifests defect or negation of knowledge rather than perfection of will; for if I always clearly knew what was true and good, I should never have any difficulty in determining what judgment I ought to come to, and what choice I ought to make, and I should thus be entirely free without ever being indifferent.

The pen is mightier than the sword.

I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.

I like to walk about amidst the beautiful things that adorn the world; but private wealth I should decline, or any sort of personal possessions, because they would take away my liberty.

It is a Christian duty, as you know, for everyone to be as happy as he can.

It should be known that at the beginning of a dynasty, taxation yields a large revenue from small assessments. At the end of the dynasty, taxation yields a small revenue from large assessments.

In omnibus requiem quaesivi, et nusquam inveni nisi in angulo cum libro.

In all things I have sought rest, and nowhere have I found it save in a corner with a book.

There's naught, no doubt, so much the spirit calms as rum and true religion.

I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

That government is best which governs least.

Anyone who denies the law of noncontradiction should be beaten and burned until he admits that to be beaten is not the same as not to be beaten, and to be burned is not the same as not to be burned.

Guilt is to the mind as pain is to the body.

Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.

Ceux qui n'ont pas connu l'Ancien Régime ne pourront jamais savoir ce qu'était la douceur de vivre.

Those who have not known the Ancien Régime will never be able to know what was the sweetness of life.

With regard to politics and the character of princes and great men, I think I am very moderate. My views of things are more conformable to Whig principles; my representation of persons to Tory prejudices. Nothing can so much prove that men commonly regard more persons than things, as to find that I am commonly numbered among the Tories.

. . . it is a serious mistake to think that metaphor is an optional thing which poets and orators may put into their work as a decoration and plain speakers can do without.

. . . good company, good wine, good welcome, can make good people.

The use of history as therapy means the corruption of history as history.

For the human race would have perished utterly had not the Lord and Savior of all, the Son of God, come among us to put an end to death.

Only a mediocre person is always at his best.

Et Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis et vidimus gloriam eius gloriam quasi unigeniti a Patre plenum gratiae et veritatis.

And the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

Form and function should be one.

There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of a trifle investment of fact.

Can you be righteous, unless you be just in rendering to things their due esteem? All things were made to be yours and you were made to prize them according to their value.

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like . . . where men were free.

Because God created the Natural — invented it out of His love and artistry — it demands our reverence.

Who says that fictions only and false hair

Become a verse? Is there in truth no beauty?

. . . materialism is the philosophy of the subject who forgets to take account of himself.

Do Justice, sir, do justice!

The bitterest tears shed over graves are for words left unsaid and deeds left undone.

Tempus edax rerum. Time, devourer of all things.

The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government.

I think he’s crude, I think he’s medieval, and I don’t want an elderly gentleman from Vienna with an umbrella inflicting his dreams upon me. I don’t have the dreams that he discusses in his books. I don’t see umbrellas in my dreams. Or balloons.

Because Wholeness is what man strives for, the power to achieve leisure is one of the fundamental powers of the human soul.

Thou hast made us for Thyself, o Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.

Humani nil a me alienum puto. Nothing human is alien to me.

Capitalism is relatively new in human history. Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man.

Logic is fixed, universal, necessary, and irreplaceable. . . . God is a rational being, the architecture of whose mind is logic.

The safest general characterisation of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.

Iustum enim est bellum quibus necessarium, et pia arma ubi nulla in armis spes est.

War is just when it is necessary; arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms.

The growth of entrepreneurial classes throughout the world is an asset in the promotion of human rights and individual liberty . . .

Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm — but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.

If I shall have no sensation in death, as some paltry philosophers think, I have no fear that the dead philosophers will ridicule my error.

Extremism in the defence of liberty is no vice, and moderation in the pursuit of justice is not a virtue

When equality is treated not as a medicine or a safety-gadget but as an ideal we begin to breed that stunted and envious sort of mind which hates all superiority.

As all those have shown who have discussed civil institutions, and as every history is full of examples, it is necessary to whoever arranges to found a Republic and establish laws in it, to presuppose that all men are bad and that they will use their malignity of mind every time they have the opportunity; and if such malignity is hidden for a time, it proceeds from the unknown reason that would not be known because the experience of the contrary had not been seen, but time, which is said to be the father of every truth, will cause it to be discovered.

Felicity is a continual progress of the desire from one object to another, the attaining of the former being still but the way to the latter. The cause whereof is that the object of man's desire is not to enjoy once only, and for one instant of time, but to assure forever the way of his future desire. And therefore the voluntary actions and inclinations of all men tend not only to the procuring, but also to the assuring of a contented life, and differ only in the way, which ariseth partly from the diversity of passions in diverse men, and partly from the difference of the knowledge or opinion each one has of the causes which produce the effect desired.

Death is not the worst that can happen to men.

Now we have found the compassion of God which appeared lost to you when we were considering God's holiness and man's sin; we have found it, I say, so great and so consistent with his holiness, as to be incomparably above anything that can be conceived. For what compassion can excel these words of the Father, addressed to the sinner doomed to eternal torments and having noway of escape: "Take my only begotten Son and make him an offering for yourself;" or these words of the Son: "Take me, and ransom your souls." For these are the voices they utter, when inviting and leading us to faith in the Gospel. Or can anything be more just than for him to remit all debt since he has earned a reward greater than all debt, if given with the love which he deserves.

Food is not bad, gluttony is; the procreation of children is not bad, lechery is; wealth is not bad, avarice is; glory is not bad, only vainglory is. So you see nothing is bad in itself, only the misuse of it, which is the soul’s negligence in cultivating its true nature.

We live at a time when there is a disposition to think that the government ought to do this and that, and that the government ought to do everything . . . If the government takes into its hands that which the man ought to do for himself, it will inflict upon him greater mischiefs than all the benefits he will have received or all the advantages that will accrue from them.

There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal.

Not to engage in the pursuit of ideas is to live like ants instead of like men.

As empty vessels make the loudest sound, so they that have the least wit are the greatest blabbers.

Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.

Security is sleeping on the back seat of the car when you're a little kid, and you've been somewhere with your mom and dad, and it's night, and you're riding home in the car, asleep. You don't have to worry about anything. Your mom and dad are in the front seat and they do all the worrying. They take care of everything.

The act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.

One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

[D]o you suppose . . . that I would have undertaken such vast labours, day and night, at home and abroad, if I were going to limit my glory by the bounds of my life? Would it not have been better to pass a quiet and leisurely life, far from toil and strife? But my soul somehow always strained to look forward to posterity, as if it would really live only when it departed from life. Were it not that souls are immortal, men's souls would not strive for undying fame in proportion to their transcending merit. The fact that the wisest men die with perfect calmness and the foolish with great perturbation proves that souls with a keener and wider vision perceive that they are going to a better state, while those of duller vision cannot see beyond death.

. . . love is the motive action of the mind . . .

Men who had fought in several wars and many bloody battles told me that no horrors of a field of battle can be compared to the awful speactacle of the ceaseless exodus of a population . . .

In other words, neither oppression nor exploitation as such is ever the main cause for resentment; wealth without visible function is much more intolerable because nobody can understand why it should be tolerated.

Let [the kings and ministers] look well after their own expense, and they may safely trust private people with theirs. If their own extravagance does not ruin the state, that of the subject never will.

A nation may lose its liberties in a day and not miss them for a century.

Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports.

Uneasy lies the head which wears the crown.

It is not at all obvious to me why greed for power is better than greed for money.

Nescire autem quid ante quam natus sis acciderit, id est semper esse puerum. Quid enim est aetas hominis, nisi ea memoria rerum veterum cum superiorum aetate contexitur?

Not to know what happened before you were born is to be a child forever. For what is the time of a man, except it be interwoven with that memory of ancient things of a superior age?

Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it.

It is instructive to note that political theorists who were untouched by the Christian revelation, almost without exception, advocate totalitarianism.

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the Old.

To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.

Speaking generally, there is no one so fit to conduct any business, or to determine how or by whom it shall be conducted, as those who are personally interested in it.

Without God man has no reference point to define himself. Twentieth-century philosophy manifests the chaos of man seeking to understand himself as a creature with dignity while having no reference point for that dignity.

War is too serious a matter to be left to generals.

When people talk as if the Crusades were nothing more than an aggressive raid against Islam, they seem to forget in the strangest way that Islam itself was only an aggressive raid against the old and ordered civilization in these parts. I do not say it in mere hostility to the religion of Mahomet; I am fully conscious of many values and virtues in it; but certainly it was Islam that was the invasion and Christendom that was the thing invaded.

Prohibition goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes.

The mere pursuit of health always leads to something unhealthy.

If chance is defined as an outcome of random influence, produced by no sequence of causes, I am sure that there is no such thing as chance, and I consider that it is but an empty word . . .

I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are wise and very beautiful; but I have never read in either of them: "Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden."

What, then, is the law? It is the collective organisation of the individual right to lawful defence. Each of us has a natural right—from God—to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two.

I have no use for cranks who despise music, because it is a gift of God. Music drives away the Devil and makes people gay; they forget thereby all wrath, unchastity, arrogance, and the like. Next after theology, I give to music the highest place and the greatest honor.

The central problem of every society is to define appropriate roles for the men.

There is a strange idea abroad that in every subject the ancient books should be read only by the professionals, and that the amateur should content himself with the modern books.

Properly speaking, there are no barbarian standards. Barbarism is the absence of standards to which appeal can be made.

. . . the Christian religion has made dogmas of all that nature had made principles . . .

I exhort you never to debase the moral currency or to lower the standard of rectitude, but to try others by the final maxim that governs your own lives, and to suffer no man and no cause to escape the undying penalty which history has the power to inflict on wrong.

Praise and imitate that man to whom, while life is pleasing, death is not grievous.

In ages when almost every man is engaged in ation, an excessive value is generally placed upon those rapid flights and superficial ideas of the intellect while its slower and deeper efforts are considerably undervalued.

If they [the Dark Ages] were dark, it was the darkness of the womb.

It is necessary for the perfection of human society that there should be men who devote their lives to contemplation.

Thou wert the meekest man that ever ate in hall among ladies; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in the rest.

The age of chivalry is gone.

Piety requires us to honor truth above our friends.

Un homme avec Dieu est toujours dans la majorité. The man with God is always in the majority.

[T]he real historian is . . . a nuisance when we want to romance about "the old days" or "the ancient Greeks and Romans." The ascertained nature of any real thing is always at first a nuisance to our natural fantasies—a wretched, pedantic, logic-chopping intruder upon a conversation which was getting along famously without it.

That man is little to be enived, whose patriotism would not gain force upon the plain of Marathon, or whose piety would not grow warmer among the ruins of Iona.

A society that puts equality — in the sense of equality of outcome — ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests.

When more of the people's sustenance is exacted through the form of taxation than is necessary to meet the just obligations of government and expenses of its economical administration, such exaction becomes ruthless extortion and a violation of the fundamental principles of free government.

Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.

If God does not exist, all things are permissible.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

Sorrow can be alleviated by good sleep, a bath and a glass of wine.

Civilisation is not inherited; it has to be learned and earned by each generation anew; if the transmission should be interrupted for one century, civilisation would die, and we should be savages again.

A good death does honour to a whole life.

For when the One Great Scorer comes

To write against your name,

He marks — not that you won or lost —

But how you played the Game.

Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can, and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.

We are like dwarves standing on the shoulders of giants. We are able to see more and more far off than they not because of any sharpness of sight or physical distinction on our part but because we are raised up by their gigantic loftiness.

The philosophy called individualism is a philosophy of social cooperation and the progressive intensification of the social nexus.

At Runnymede, at Runnymede,

Your rights were won at Runnymede!

No freeman shall be fined or bound,

Or dispossessed of freehold ground,

Except by lawful judgment found

And passed upon him by his peers.

Forget not, after all these years,

The Charter signed at Runnymede.

You have rights antecedent to all earthly governments: rights that cannot be repealed or restrained by human laws; rights derived from the Great Legislator of the universe.

There is in the universe something for the description and analysis of which the natural sciences cannot contribute anything. There are events beyond the range of those events that the procedures of the natural sciences are fit to observe and describe. There is human action.

I am a Conservative to preserve all that is good in our constitution, a Radical to remove all that is bad. I seek to preserve property and to respect order, and I equally decry the appeal to the passions of the many or the prejudices of the few.

Of all . . . ordinary habits of thought, perhaps the one that has the most unfortunate influences is the belief in inevitable progress. If the world is making for "good," then "good" can never be in serious danger. This leads to a disinclination to see how big fundamental things like liberty can in any way depend on trivial material things like guns. There is no realisation of the fact that the world may take a wrong turning.

Finds comfort in himself and in his cause;

And, while the mortal mist is gathering, draws

His breath in confidence of Heaven's applause:

This is the happy Warrior; this is He

That every Man in arms should wish to be.

. . . a criminal who, having renounced reason . . . hath, by the unjust violence and slaughter he hath committed upon one, declared war against all mankind, and therefore may be destroyed as a lion or tyger, one of those wild savage beasts with whom men can have no society nor security. And upon this is grounded the great law of Nature, "Whoso shedeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed."

If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true . . . and hence no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.

Je veux que la mort me trouve plantant mes choux. I want death to find me planting my cabbages.

The view of Jerusalem is the history of the world; it is more, it is the history of earth and of heaven.

Ne quid nimis. In all things, moderation.

No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe . . .

The main political problem is how to prevent the police power from becoming tyrannical. This is the meaning of all the struggles for liberty.

Death is to be preferred before slavery and base deeds.

Either death is a state of nothingness and utter unconsciousness, or, as men say, there is a change and migration of the soul from this world to another . . . now if death be of such a nature, I say that to die is to gain; for eternity is then only a single night.

. . . to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

It ought not to be disputed that rational nature was made holy by God, in order to be happy in enjoying Him.

The metaphor is perhaps one of man's most fruitful potentialities. Its efficacy verges on magic, and it seems a tool for creation which God forgot inside one of His creatures when He made him.

Si vis pacem, para bellum or Si desiderat pacem, preparet bellum.

If you want peace, prepare for war.

A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion.

It is enough to say here that Nature, like us but in her different way, is much alienated from her Creator, though in her, as in us, gleams of the old beauty remain.

By virtue of exchange, one man's prosperity is beneficial to all others.

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.

Art, like morality, consists in drawing the line somewhere.

Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees all others.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern.

Sed quis custodiet ipsos Custodes? But who shall guard the guards?

Cogito, ergo sum or Je pense, donce je suis or I think, therefore I am.

Remember the rights of the savage, as we call him. Remember that the happiness of his humble home, remember that the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan among the winter snows, are as sacred in the eye of Almighty God as are your own. Remember that He who has united you together as human beings in the same flesh and blood, has bound you by the law of mutual love, that that mutual love is not limited by the shores of this island, is not limited by the boundaries of Christian civilisation, that it passes over the whole surface of the earth, and embraces the meanest along with the greatest in its wide scope.

One cannot conceive anything so strange and so implausible that it has not already been said by one philosopher or another.

People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors.

The unexamined life is not worth living.

Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.

The history of the world is but the biography of great men.

. . . Western science grew out of Christian theology. It is probably not an accident that modern science grew explosively in Christian Europe and left the rest of the world behind. A thousand years of theological disputes nurtured the habit of analytical thinking that could be applied to the analysis of natural phenomena. On the other hand, the close historical relations between theology and science have caused conflicts between science and Christianity that do not exist between science and other religions . . .

The philosopher ought never to try to avoid the duty of making up his mind.

No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he'd only had good intentions—he had money, too.

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor.

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise

E'n la sua volontade e nostra pace. And in His will is our peace.

God’s work and God’s word are equally revelations from him. They are consequently both alike true and both alike sacred and to be treated with reverance. It is absolutley impossible that when they are both adequately interpreted they can come into conflict. Jealousy on either part is treason to the Author and Lord of both.

In whatever manner God created the world, it would always have been regular and in a certain general order. God, however, has chosen the most perfect, that is to say, the one which is at the same time the simplest in hypothesis and the richest in phenomena.

Impartiality is a pompous name for indifference, which is an elegant name for ignorance.

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail — its roof may shake — the wind may blow through it — the storm may enter — the rain may enter — but the King of England cannot enter — all his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement!

If the battle for civilization comes down to the wimps versus the barbarians, the barbarians are going to win.

No freemen shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or exiled or in any way destroyed, nor will we go upon him nor send upon him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.

Stone walls do not a prison make,

Nor iron bars a cage;

Minds innocent and quiet take

That for an hermitage;

If I have freedom in my love,

And in my soul am free,

Angels alone that soar above

Enjoy such liberty.

You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours.

Abuse does not rule out use.

As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.

The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the divinity itself; and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

Considerate la vostra semenza: / fatti non foste a viver come bruti, / ma per seguir virtute e conoscenza.

Consider the seed from which you are sprung: you were not meant to live as brutes, but to pursue virtue and wisdom.

Government cannot relieve from toil. The normal must take care of themselves. Self-government means self-support . . . Ultimately property rights and personal rights are the same thing . . . History reveals no civilised people among whom there was not a highly educated class and large aggregations of wealth. Large profits mean large payrolls.

I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.

No matter how many instances of white swans we may have observed, this does not justify the conclusion that all swans are white.

Veritas liberabit vos. The truth shall set you free.

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them… We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Sweet and fitting it is to die for the fatherland.

You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down— up to a man's age-old dream; the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order— or down to the ant heap totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.

Perfect humility dispenses with modesty.

Charity is no substitute for justice withheld.

Duty is not collective; it is personal.

Human rights are not a privilege conferred by government. They are every human being's entitlement by virtue of his humanity. The right to life does not depend, and must not be contingent, on the pleasure of anyone else, not even a parent or sovereign . . . you must weep that your own government, at present, seems blind to this truth.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

They indeed are objects of pity who fight against their king, their country, and their oath.

Man cannot live without joy; therefore when he is deprived of true spiritual joys it is necessary that he become addicted to carnal pleasures.

I could not love thee (Deare) so much,

Lov'd I not Honour more.

If an exchange between two parties is voluntary, it will not take place unless both believe they will benefit from it. Most economic fallacies derive from the neglect of this simple insight, from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can only gain at the expense of another.

Of all the vulgar arts of government, that of solving every difficulty that might arise by thrusting the hand into the public purse is the most illusory and contemptible.

If it be necessary, therefore, as it appears, that the heavenly kingdom be made up of men, and this cannot be effected unless the aforesaid satisfaction be made, which none but God can make and none but man ought to make, it is necessary for the God-man to make it.

Dilige et quod vis fac. Love, and do what you like.

If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind.

Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.

Liberty is the idea that men have rights which no government can infringe. In theory at least Liberty could flourish under an absolute monarchy. Certainly it can be in real danger under a Democracy. There can be no worse tyrant than the unbridled will of the majority.

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Beware the man of one book.

The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.

The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it on something solid.