11
Cicero
2
Epicurus
2
Hegel
1
Hesiod
1
Homer
4
Juvenal
4
Plato
1
Ayn Rand
1
Seneca
10
Seneca
10
Adam Smith
5
Socrates
2
Tacitus
3
Lao Tzu
1
Sun Tzu
4
Virgil
3
Voltaire
Seneca
In the meantime, cling tooth and nail to the following rule: not to give in to adversity, not to trust prosperity, and always take full note of fortune’s habit of behaving just as she pleases.
+
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.
+
Adam Smith
The prudent man always studies seriously and earnestly to understand whatever he professes to understand, and not merely to persuade other people that he understands it; and though his talents may not always be very brilliant, they are always perfectly genuine
+
Thomas Carlyle
In a controversy, the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.
+
Adam Smith
It was not by gold or by silver, but by labour, that all the wealth of the world was originally purchased;
+
Abraham Lincoln
I'm a success today because I had a friend who believed in me and I didn't have the heart to let him down.
+
Baruch Spinoza
Better that right counsels be known to enemies than that the evil secrets of tyrants should be concealed from the citizens. They who can treat secretly of the affairs of a nation have it absolutely under their authority; and as they plot against the enemy in time of war, so do they against the citizens in time of peace.
+
Adam Smith
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
+
Aldous Huxley
The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.
+
Socrates
Are you not ashamed of caring so much for the making of money and for fame and prestige, when you neither think nor care about wisdom and truth and the improvement of your soul?
+
Tacitus
There was more courage in bearing trouble than in escaping from it; the brave and the energetic cling to hope, even in spite of fortune; the cowardly and the indolent are hurried by their fears
+
Charles Darwin
It is not the strongest of the species that survives,
not the most intelligent that survives.
It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.
+
Thomas Jefferson
The opinions of men are not the object of civil government, nor under its jurisdiction.
+
George Santayana
Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable; what it is or what it means can never be said.
+
Thomas Paine
If a house of legislation is to be composed of men of one class, for the purpose of protecting a distinct interest, all the other interests should have the same. The inequality, as well as the burthen of taxation, arises from admitting it in one case, and not in all. Had there been a house of farmers, there had been no game laws; or a house of merchants and manufacturers. the taxes had neither been so unequal nor so excessive. It is from the power of taxation being in the hands of those who can throw so great a part of it from their own shoulders, that it has raged without a check.
+
Arthur Schopenhauer
Virtue cannot be taught, no more than genius; indeed, concepts are as unfruitful for it as for art and of use only as tools.
+
Samuel Adams
The true object of loyalty is a good legal constitution, which, as it condemns every instance of oppression and lawless power, derives a certain remedy to the sufferer by allowing him to remonstrate his grievances, and pointing out methods of relief when the gentle arts of persuasion have lost their efficacy.
+
Jean-Paul Sartre
Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.
+
Adam Smith
No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.
+
Arthur Schopenhauer
What every one most aims at in ordinary contact with his fellows is to prove them inferior to himself.
+
Seneca
you shall be told what pleased me to-day in the writings of
Hecato; it is these words: "What progress, you ask, have I made? I have begun to be a friend to myself." That was
indeed a great benefit; such a person can never be alone. You may be sure that such a man is a friend to all mankind.
+
Montesquieu
Government is like everything else in this world: if it is to be preserved, it must first be loved.
+
John Stuart Mill
The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.
+
Adam Smith
All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.
+
John F. Kennedy
The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.
+
Plato
One which is the next best, and has the advantage of compelling the citizens to look to their characters:—Let there be a general rule that every one shall enter into voluntary contracts at his own risk, and there will be less of this scandalous money-making, and the evils of which we were speaking will be greatly lessened in the State. Yes, they will be greatly lessened. At present the governors, induced by the motives which I have named, treat their subjects badly; while they and their adherents, especially the young men of the governing class, are habituated to lead a life of luxury and idleness both of body and mind; they do nothing, and are incapable of resisting either pleasure or pain. Very true. They themselves care only for making money, and are as indifferent as the pauper to the cultivation of virtue. Yes,
+
Thomas Jefferson
Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves.
+
Virgil
But you, Roman, must remember that you have to guide the nations by your authority, for this is to be your skill, to graft tradition onto peace, to shew mercy to the conquered, and to wage war until the haughty are brought low.
+
Arthur C. Clarke
Civilization and Religion are incompatible and Faith is believing what you know isn't true.
+
John Maynard Keynes
By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some.
+
Montesquieu
Democratic and aristocratic states are not in their own nature free. Political liberty is to be found only in moderate governments; and even in these it is not always found. It is there only when there is no abuse of power. But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.
+
Seneca
And what’s so bad about your being deprived of that?... All things seem unbearable to people who have become spoilt, who have become soft through a life of luxury, ailing more in the mind than they ever are in the body.
+
Friedrich A. Hayek
Nobody can be a great economist who is only an economist - and I am even tempted to add that the economist who is only an economist is likely to become a nuisance if not a positive danger.”
+
Fulton J. Sheen
Criticism of others is thus an oblique form of self-commendation. We think we make the picture hang straight on our wall by telling our neighbors that all his pictures are crooked.
+
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
It is much easier to recognise error than to find truth; for error lies on the surface and may be overcome; but truth lies in the depths, and to search for it is not given to every one.
+
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
If you would stand well with a great mind, leave him with a favorable impression of yourself; if with a little mind, leave him with a favorable impression of himself.
+
Montesquieu
It is not the young people that degenerate; they are not spoiled till those of maturer age are already sunk into corruption.
+
Thomas Jefferson
Friendship is but another name for an alliance with the follies and the misfortunes of others. Our own share of miseries is sufficient: why enter then as volunteers into those of another?
+