"By "nationalism" I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions or tens of millions of people can be confidently labelled "good" or "bad." But secondly -- and this is much more important -- I mean the habit of identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognizing no other duty than that of advancing its interests. Nationalism is not to be confused with patriotism."
"I hate quotes. Think for yourself!"
"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better for worse as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried. Not for nothing one face, on character, one fact, makes much impression on him, and another none... A man is relieved and gay when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise shall give him no peace. It is a delieverance which does not deliver. In the attempt his genius deserts him; no muse befriendss; no invention, no hope.
Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. "
"...I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude--the feelings which increase with the years."
"To die is poignantly bitter, but the idea of having to die without having lived is unbearable"
"A common and natural result of an undue respect for the law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpiatation of the heart. They have no doubt that it is a damnable business in which they are concerned; they are all peaceably inclinded. Now, what are they? Men at all? Or small moveable forts and magazines, at the service of some unscrupulous man in power?"
"Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heighteded by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer."
"Every national church or religion has established itself by pretending some special mission from God communicated to certain individuals. The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus Christ, their apostles and saints; and the Turks their Mahomet; as if the way to God was not open to every man alike.
Each of those churches show certain books which they call revelation, or the word of God. The Jews say that their word of God was given by God to Moses face to face; the Christians say, that their word of God came by divine inspiration; and the Turks say, that their word of God (the Koran) was brought by an angel from heaven.Each of those churches accuses the other of unbelief; and, for my own part, I disbelieve them all....left in the general wreck of superstion, of false systems of government, and fake theology, we lose sight of morality, of humanity, and of the theology that is true."
"I cannot conceive of a God who rewards and punishes his creatures, or has a will of the kind that we experience in ourselves. Neither can I nor would I want to conceive of an individual that survives his physical death; let feeble souls, from fear or absurd egoism, cherish such thoughts. I am satisfied with the mystery of the eternity of life and with the awareness and a glimpse of the marvelous structure of the existing world, together with the devoted striving to comprehend a portion, be it ever so tiny, of the Reason that manifests itself in nature." "There is one kind of prison where the man is behind bars, and everything that he desires is outside; and there is another kind where the things are behind the bars, and the man is outside." "To be happy in old age, it is necessary that we accustom ourselves to objects that can accompany the mind all the way through life, and that we take the rest as good in their day. The mere man of pleasure is miserable in old age, and the mere drudge in business is butt little better: whereas natural philosophy, mathematical, and mechanical science, are a continual source of tranquil plearsure; and inspite of the gloomy dogma of priets and of superstitions, the study of those things is the study of the true theology. It teaches man to know and to admire the creator, for the principles of science are in the creation, and are unchangeable, and of divine origin."
" 'I'll certainly tell you how it strikes me, Socrates,' he said. 'For some of us old men often meet together, like the proverbial birds of a feather. And when we do meet, most of them are full of woes; they hanker for the pleasures of their youth, remembering how they used to make love and drink and go to parties and the like, and thinking it a great deprivation that they can't do so any more. Life was good then, they think, whereas now they can hardly be said to live at all. And ... proceed to harp on the miseries old age brings. But in my opinion, Socrates, they are putting the blame in the wrong place... In all this... there is only one thing to blame; and that is not their age, Socrates, but their character. For if men are sensible and good-tempered, old age is easy enough to bear: if not, youth as well as age is a burden.'"
"... The really valuable thing in the pageant of human life seems to me not the political state, but the creative, sentient individual, the personality; it alone creates the noble and the sublime, while the herd as such remains dull in thought and dull in feeling. This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of the herd nature, the military system, which I abhor. That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a back bone was all he needed. This plague spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the pestilent nonsense that goes by the name of partriotism-how ardently I hate them! How vile and despicable seems war to me! I would rather be hacked into pieces than take part in such an abominable business. My opinion of the human race is high enough that I believe this bogey would have disappeared long ago, had the sound sense of the peoples not been systematically corrupted by commercial and political interests acting through the schools and the Press." "The real ailment, however, seems to me to lie in the attitude which was created by world war and which dominates all of our actions; namely, the belief that we must in peacetime so organize our whole life and work that in the event of war we would be sure of victory. This attitude gives rise to the belief that one's freedom and indeed one's existence are threatened by powerful enemies." "There is a planet in the solar system where the people are so stupid they didn't catch on for a million years that there was another half to their planet! Only five-hundred-years ago! And yet they are now calling themselves homo sapiens!" "All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable... In other words, when a sixth of the population of a nation which has undertaken to be the refuge of liberty are slaves, and a whole is unjustly over run and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think that it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionize. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army.