Quotes
<< Prev Next >>
If human beings were shown what they're really like, they'd either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves
Idealism is the noble toga that political gentlemen drape over their will to power
I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself
I can sympathise with people's pains, but not with their pleasures. There is something curiously boring about somebody else's happiness
Hell isn't merely paved with good intentions; it's walled and roofed with them. Yes, and furnished too
Happiness is a hard master, particularly other people's happiness
Habit converts luxurious enjoyments into dull and daily necessities
Great is truth, but still greater, from a practical point of view, is silence about truth. By simply not mentioning certain subjects... totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion much more effectively than they could have by the most eloquent denunciations
God isn't compatible with machinery and scientific medicine and universal happiness. You must make your choice. Our civilization has chosen machinery and medicine and happiness
From their experience or from the recorded experience of others (history), men learn only what their passions and their metaphysical prejudices allow them to learn
Search
On Anger: "For every minute you remain angry, you give up sixty seconds of peace of mind."
Essays
Essays
On Destiny: "Our destiny exercises its influence over us even when, as yet, we have not learned its nature: it is our future that lays down the law of our today."
Human, All Too Human
Human, All Too Human
On Friendship: "A crowd is not company; and faces are but a gallery of pictures; and talk but a tinkling cymbal, where there is no love."
Essays
Essays