Which Quotes

Every man who knows how to read has it in his power to magnify himself, to multiply the ways in which he exists, to make his life full, significant and interesting.

What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts.

He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has need to be forgiven.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them.

A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circlue of our felicities.

Punishment is now unfashionable... because it creates moral distinctions among men, which, to the democratic mind, are odious. We prefer a meaningless collective guilt to a meaningful individual responsibility.

Do not separate text from historical background. If you do, you will have perverted and subverted the Constitution, which can only end in a distorted, bastardized form of illegitimate government.

How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.

Happiness comes only when we push our brains and hearts to the farthest reaches of which we are capable.

Power is domination, control, and therefore a very selective form of truth which is a lie.

I have no desire to crow over anybody or to see anybody eating crow, figuratively or otherwise. We should all get together and make a country in which everybody can eat turkey whenever he pleases.

The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along, paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.

Injustice is censured because the censures are afraid of suffering, and not from any fear which they have of doing injustice.

It's that wonderful old-fashioned idea that others come first and you come second. This was the whole ethic by which I was brought up. Others matter more than you do, so 'don't fuss, dear; get on with it.'

My greatest environments in which I can grow, or grow up, is in personal romantic relationships with a man.

I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some day die, which is not so.

Adversity is the state in which man most easily becomes acquainted with himself, being especially free of admirers then.

That is never too often repeated, which is never sufficiently learned.

The water in a vessel is sparkling; the water in the sea is dark. The small truth has words which are clear; the great truth has great silence.

Education is a crutch with which the foolish attack the wise to prove that they are not idiots.

The books that help you most are those which make you think that most. The hardest way of learning is that of easy reading; but a great book that comes from a great thinker is a ship of thought, deep freighted with truth and beauty.

The more you like yourself, the less you are like anyone else, which makes you unique.

To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness.

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

There is a point at which even justice does injury.

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

Peace Train is a song I wrote, the message of which continues to breeze thunderously through the hearts of millions of human beings.

A sense is what has the power of receiving into itself the sensible forms of things without the matter, in the way in which a piece of wax takes on the impress of a signet-ring without the iron or gold.

Immortality: A toy which people cry for, And on their knees apply for, Dispute, contend and lie for, And if allowed Would be right proud Eternally to die for.