Over 40,000 Famous Quotes Sorted By Topic and Author

Any good practical philosophy must start out with the recognition of our having a body.

Men have ascribed to God imperfections that they would deplore in themselves.

...far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently, because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system.

When we find ourselves wondering about the meaning of conditions and events, its always useful to ask, who profits?

He who does not bellow out the truth when he knows the truth makes himself the accomplice of liars and forgers.

Science is facts. Just as houses are made of stones, so science is made of facts. But a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science.

Mere facts are for children only. As they begin to point towards conclusions they become food for men.

Destiny is an invention of the cowardly and the resigned.

All of us necessarily hold many casual opinions that are ludicrously wrong simply because life is far too short for us to think through even a small fraction of the topics that we come across.

Facts do not "speak for themselves." They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

Fundamentalist religion is the most pervasive vision of central planning, though many fundamentalists may oppose human central planning as a usurpation or "playing God." This is consistent with the fundamentalist vision of an unconstrained God and a highly constrained man.

It's amazing how much panic one honest man can spread among a multitude of hypocrites.

People who have time on their hands will inevitably waste the time of people who have work to do.

The march of science and technology does not imply growing intellectual complexity in the lives of most people. It often means the opposite.

Organizational progress parallels that in science and technology, permitting ultimate simplicity through intermediate complexity.

Morality, like other inputs into the social process, follows the law of diminishing returns- meaning ultimately, negative returns. People can be too moral.

Unbounded morality ultimately becomes counterproductive even in terms of the same moral principles being sought. The law of diminishing returns applies to morality.

Eagles soar, but weasels never get sucked into jet engines.

Rejoicing not in the many but in the probity of the few, we toil for truth alone.

To the extent that philosophical positions both confuse us and close doors to further inquiry, they are likely to be wrong...