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
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.
+
Carl von Clausewitz
peace is maintained by the equilibrium of forces, and will continue just as long as this equilibrium exists, and no longer.
+
Arthur Schopenhauer
A poet or philosopher should have no fault to find with his age if it only permits him to do his work undisturbed in his own corner; nor with his fate if the corner granted him allows of his following his vocation without having to think about other people. For the brain to be a mere laborer in the service of the belly, is indeed the common lot of almost all those who do not live on the work of their hands; and they are far from being discontented with their lot. But it strikes despair into a man of great mind, whose brain-power goes beyond the measure necessary for the service of the will; and he prefers, if need be, to live in the narrowest circumstances, so long as they afford him the free use of his time for the development and application of his faculties; in other words, if they give him the leisure which is invaluable to him. It is otherwise with ordinary people; for them leisure has no value in itself, nor is it, indeed, without its dangers, as these people seem to know. The technical work of our time, which is done to an unprecedented perfection, has, by increasing and multiplying objects of luxury, given the favorites of fortune a choice between more leisure and culture upon the one side, and additional luxury and good living, but with increased activity, upon the other; and true to their character they choose the latter, and prefer champagne to freedom. And they are consistent in their choice; for, to them, every exertion of the mind which does not serve the aims of the will is folly. Intellectual effort for its own sake, they call eccentricity.
+
H.L. Mencken
One man who minds his own business is more valuable to the world than 10,000 cocksure moralists.
+
Ludwig Von Mises
Nobody ever recommended a dictatorship aiming at ends other than those he himself approved. He who advocates dictatorship always advocates the unrestricted rule of his own will
+
Cicero
What is morally wrong can never be advantageous, even when it enables you to make some gain that you believe to be to your advantage. The mere act of believing that some wrongful course of action constitutes an advantage is pernicious.
+
Arthur Conan Doyle
Mediocrity knows nothing higher than itself; but talent instantly recognizes genius.
+
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
You only keep a watch on those who cause you suffering. If you want to remain unknown to the world, all that's needed is not to hurt anyone.
+
Samuel Johnson
But the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favour, and reason by degrees submits to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness.
+
Betty Smith
Intolerance is a thing that causes war, pogroms, crucifixions, lynchings, and makes people cruel to little children and each other. It is responsible for most of the viciousness, violence, terror, and heart and soul breaking of the world.
+
Arthur Schopenhauer
The ordinary man places his life’s happiness in things external to him, in property, rank, wife and children, friends, society, and the like, so that when he loses them or finds them disappointing, the foundation of his happiness is destroyed.
+
William Cullen Bryant
Can anything be imagined more abhorrent to every sentiment of generosity and justice, than the law which arms the rich with the legal right to fix, by assize, the wages of the poor? If this is not slavery, we have forgotten its definition. Strike the right of associating for the sale of labor from the privileges of a freeman, and you may as well bind him to a master, or ascribe him to the soil.
+
Friedrich Nietzsche
Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.
+
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.
+
Epicurus
The wealth required by nature is limited and is easy to procure; but the wealth required by vain ideals extends to infinity.
+
Seneca
Those who forget the past, ignore the present, and fear for the future have a life that is very brief and filled with anxiety: when they come to face death, the wretches understand too late that for such a long time they have busied themselves in doing nothing.
+
John Locke
The great question which in all ages has disturbed mankind, and brought on them the greatest part of those mischiefs which have ruined cities, depopulated countries, and disordered the peace of the world, has been, not whether there be power in the world, nor whence it came, but who should have it.
+
Thomas Paine
Socrates poisoned, Aristides ostracized, Aristotle fleeing for his life, Jesus crucified, Paul beheaded, Peter crucified head downward, Savonarola martyred, Spinoza hunted, tracked and cursed, and an order issued that no man should speak to him not supply him food or shelter, Bruno burned, Galileo imprisoned, Huss, Wyclif, Latimer and Tyndale used for kindling - all this in the name of religion, institutional religion, the one thing that has caused more misery, heartaches, bloodshed, war, than all other causes combined.
+
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.
+
Sophocles
Do not believe that you alone can be right.
The man who thinks that,
The man who maintains that only he has the power
To reason correctly, the gift to speak, the soul
A man like that, when you know him, turns out empty.
+
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
A taste for ostentation is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty
+
Albert Einstein
Anyone who doesn't take truth seriously in small matters cannot be trusted in large ones either
+
Sun Tzu
Those who are skilled in combat do not become angered, those who are skilled at winning do not become afraid. Thus the wise win before they fight, while the ignorant fight to win.
+
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.
+
Arthur C. Clarke
Civilization and Religion are incompatible and Faith is believing what you know isn't true.
+
Adam Smith
is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.
+
Immanuel Kant
Seek not the favor of the multitude; it is seldom got by honest and lawful means. But seek the testimony of few; and number not voices, but weigh them.
+
Adam Smith
The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.
+
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
There is no art in turning a goddess into a witch, a virgin into a whore, but the opposite operation, to give dignity to what has been scorned, to make the degraded desirable, that calls for art or for character.
+
Juvenal
For no deity is held in such reverence amongst us as Wealth; though as yet, O baneful money, thou hast no temple of thine own; not yet have we reared altars to Money in like manner as we worship Peace and Honour, Victory and Virtue
+
Kilroy J. Oldster
It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. Wisdom, compassion, and courage are essential ingredients for love. To love other people we must begin by forgiving them. If we do not bring forth the part of us that is capable of love and compassion, it will destroy us.
+
John Adams
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.
+
H. L. Mencken
Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.
+
Montesquieu
Those Greek statesmen who lived under democratic government knew of no support for it other than virtue. Today, statesmen can tell us only of manufacturing, finances, wealth, and even luxury.
+