Quote collection
427 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"If you think of yourselves as helpless and ineffectual, it is certain that you will create a despotic government to be your master. The wise despot, therefore, maintains among his subjects a popular sense that they are helpless and ineffectual."
"Blood is thicker than water, but politics are thicker than blood."
"Life is a mask through which the universe expresses itself."
"To suspect your own mortality is to know the beginning of terror, to learn irrefutably that you are mortal is to know the end of terror."
"If you live in bad faith, lies will appear to you like the truth."
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
"To endure oneself may be the hardest task in the universe. You cannot hire a wise man or any other intellect to solve it for you. There's no writ of inquest or calling of witness to provide answers."
"The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy."
"There is not secret to balance. You just have to feel the waves."
"Does a population have informed consent when a ruling minority acts in secret to ignite a war, doing this to justify the existence of the minority's forces? ... Failure to provide full information for informed consent on such an issue represents an ultimate crime."
"Does a population have informed consent when that population is not taught the inner workings of its monetary system, and then is drawn, all unknowing, into economic adventures?"
"Good governance never depends upon laws, but upon the personal qualities of those who govern. The machinery of government is always subordinate to the will of those who administer that machinery. The most important element of government, therefore, is the method of choosing leaders."
"When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles."
"Revenge is for children and the emotionally retarded."
"Caution is the path to mediocrity. Gliding, passionless mediocrity is all that most people think they can achieve."
"Governments can be useful to the governed only so long as inherent tendencies toward tyranny are restrained."
"Fear is the mind-killer."
"The gravest error a thinking person can make is to believe that one particular version of history is absolute fact. History is recorded by a series of observers, none of whom is impartial. The facts are distorted by sheer passage of time and thousands of years of humanity's dark ages, deliberate misrepresentations by religious sects, and the inevitable corruption that comes from an accumulation of careless mistakes. The wise person, then, views history as a set of lessons to be learned, choices and ramifications to be considered and discussed, and mistakes that should never again be made."
"A person needs new experiences. They jar something deep inside, allowing you to grow. Without them, it sleeps- seldom to awaken. The sleeper must awaken."
"Reason is the first victim of strong emotion."