Quote collection
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"Oral delivery aims at persuasion and making the listener believe they are converted. Few persons are capable of being convinced the majority allow themselves to be persuaded."
"The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes."
"Humans fear reason, but they ought to fear stupidity- for reason can be hard, but stupidity can be fatal."
"Don't judge anyone harshly until you yourself have been through his experiences"
"To the person with a firm purpose all men and things are servants."
"Truth has to be repeated constantly, because Error also is being preached all the time, and not just by a few, but by the multitude. In the Press and Encyclopaedias, in Schools and Universities, everywhere Error holds sway, feeling happy and comfortable in the knowledge of having Majority on its side."
"Nothing is more odious than the majority, for it consists of a few powerful leaders, a certain number of accommodating scoundrels and submissive weaklings, and a mass of men who trot after them without thinking, or knowing their own minds."
"Man's highest merit always is, as much as possible, to rule external circumstances and as little as possible to let himself be ruled by them."
"Tolerance should really be only a temporary attitude; it must lead to recognition. To tolerate means to offend."
"How many years must a man do nothing, before he can at all know what is to be done and how to do it!"
"We cannot and must not get rid of nor deny our characteristics. But we can give them shape and direction."
"Whatever Nature undertakes, she can only accomplish it in a sequence. She never makes a leap."
"Every day I observe more and more the folly of judging of others by ourselves; and I have so much trouble with myself, and my own heart is in such constant agitation, that I am well content to let others pursue their own course, if they only allow me the same privilege."
"Death is Nature's expert advice to get plenty of Life."
"If you inquire what people are like here, I must answer, "The same as everywhere.""
"nothing puts me so completely out of patience as the utterance of a wretched commonplace when I am talking from my inmost heart."
"Who is the happiest man? He who is alive to the merit of others, and can rejoice in their enjoyment as if it were his own."
"It is only necessary to grow old to become more charitable and even indulgent. I see no fault committed by others that I have not committed myself."
"Prudent and active men, who know their strength and use it with limit and circumspection, alone go far in the affairs of the world."
"We are pantheists when we study nature, polytheists when we write poetry, monotheists in our morality."