Over 40,000 Famous Quotes Sorted By Topic and Author

The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.

Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless.

No matter what our achievements might be, we think well of ourselves only in rare moments. We need people to bear witness against our inner judge, who keeps book on our shortcomings and transgressions. We need people to convince us that we are not as bad as we think we are.

The fear of becoming a 'has-been' keeps some people from becoming anything. - The Passionate State of the Mind, 1954.

It is easier to love humanity than to love one's neighbor.

Where there is the necessary technical skill to move mountains, there is no need for the faith that moves mountains.

How frighteningly few are the persons whose death would spoil our appetite and make the world seem empty.

The greatest weariness comes from work not done.

Thought is a process of exaggeration. The refusal to exaggerate is not infrequently an alibi for the disinclination to think or praise.

Men weary as much of not doing the things they want to do as of doing the things they do not want to do.

In a trader-dominated society, the scribe is usually kept out of the management of affairs, but it given a more or less free hand in the cultural field. By frustrating the scribe's craving for commanding action, the trader draws upon himself the scribe's wrath and scorn.

When we are in competition with ourselves, and match our todays against our yesterdays, we derive encouragement from past misfortunes and blemishes. Moreover, the competition with ourselves leaves unimpaired our benevolence toward our fellow men.

All mass movements avail themselves of action as a means of unification. The conflicts a mass movement seeks and incites serve not only to down its enemies but also to strip its followers of their distinct individuality and render them more soluble in the collective medium.

The monstrous evils of the twentieth century have shown us that the greediest money grubbers are gentle doves compared with money-hating wolves like Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler, who in less than three decades killed or maimed nearly a hundred million men, women, and children and brought untold suffering to a large portion of mankind.

Every era has a currency that buys souls. In some the currency is pride, in others it is hope, in still others it is a holy cause. There are of course times when hard cash will buy souls, and the remarkable thing is that such times are marked by civility, tolerance, and the smooth working of everyday life.

Whoever originated the cliche that money is the root of all evil knew hardly anything about the nature of evil and very little about human beings.

It is the awareness of unfulfilled desires which gives a nation the feeling that it has a mission and a destiny.

The great crimes of the twentieth century were committed not by money-grubbing capitalists but by dedicated idealists. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler were contemptuous of money. The passage from the nineteenth to the twentieth century has been a passage from considerations of money to considerations of power. How naive the cliche that money is the root of evil!

Passionate hatred can give meaning and purpose to an empty life.

The game of History is usually played by the best and the worst over the heads of thr majority in the middle.