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Quotes by Philosopher
"War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle."
197
"Justice without force is powerless; force without justice is tyrannical."
196
"Even in our day, science suspects beyond the Polar seas, at the very circle of the Arctic Pole, the existence of a sea which never freezes and a continent which is ever green."
195
"One does not inhabit a country; one inhabits a language. That is our country, our fatherland - and no other."
193
"A politician divides mankind into two classes: tools and enemies."
193
"Liberal democracy - as you know, in the old days, we were saying we want socialism with a human face. Today's left effectively offers global capitalism with a human face, more tolerance, more rights and so on. So the question is, is this enough or not? Here I remain a Marxist: I think not."
193
"Rather than always impose your will, allow men to learn from their mistakes. Great failures make great teachers; success enables one to forget some thingsa failure cannot afford to."
190
"I was really too honest a man to be a politician and live."
190
"The time when most of you should withdraw into yourself is when you are forced to be in a crowd."
Time,
190
"A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour."
Man,
189
"Everything is pathology, except for indifference."
186
"The highest and most beautiful things in life are not to be heard about, nor read about, nor seen but, if one will, are to be lived."
186
"What a peculiar privilege has this little agitation of the brain which we call 'thought'."
183
"He who has health, has hope; and he who has hope, has everything."
182
"I have just three things to teach: simplicity, patience, compassion. These three are your greatest treasures."
182
"To want fame is to prefer dying scorned than forgotten."
182
"It is proof of a base and low mind for one to wish to think with the masses or majority, merely because the majority is the majority. Truth does not change because it is, or is not, believed by a majority of the people."
182
"This open eye for possible alternatives which need to be scrutinized before we can determine which is the best grounded is profoundly disconcerting to all conservatives and to almost all revolutionaries."
180
"Truth is a mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, anthropomorphisms, in short a sum of human relations which have been subjected to poetic and rhetorical intensification, translation and decoration; truths are illusions of which we have forgotten that they are illusions, metaphors which have become worn by frequent use and have lost all sensuous vigour. Yet we still do not know where the drive to truth comes from, for so far we have only heard about the obligation to be truthful which society imposes in order to exist"from, "On Truth and Lying in a Non-Moral Sense"."
176
"The world is not comprehensible, but it is embraceable: through the embracing of one of its beings."
174
"The thought of suicide is a great consolation: by means of it one gets through many a dark night."
174
"All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else."
173
"Old age realizes the dreams of youth: look at Dean Swift; in his youth he built an asylum for the insane, in his old age he was himself an inmate."
172
"Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance - these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible."
172
"It is essential to seek out enemy agents who have come to conduct espionage against you and to bribe them to serve you. Give them instructions and care for them. Thus doubled agents are recruited and used."
171
"Jealousy - that jumble of secret worship and ostensible aversion."
169
"Be the sun in someone's dark sky."
168
"Fill your bowl to the brim and it will spill. Keep sharpening your knife and it will blunt."
168
"Genius is an infinite capacity for taking pains."
167
"Reason is a whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness."
167
"Wise men argue causes; fools decide them."
167
"The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration."
166
"Anyone who speaks in the name of others is always an imposter."
166
"I - and I still consider myself, I'm sorry to tell you, a Marxist and a Communist, but I couldn't help noticing how all the best Marxist analyses are always analyses of a failure."
166
"What surrounds us we endure better for giving it a name - and moving on."
165
"Let philosophy resolutely aim to be as scientific as possible, but let her not forget her strong kinship with literature."
165
"Narrative identity takes part in the story's movement, in the dialectic between order and disorder."
165
"The only happiness a brave person ever troubles themselves in asking about, is happiness enough to get their work done."
164
"Don't water anything that you don't want to grow in your life."
163
"The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays."
162
"The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation."
162
"I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them."
162
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