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I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
 
Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.
 
I am one of the few people I know of who has argued in print that torture may be an ethical necessity in our war on terror.
 
He who allows oppression, shares the crime.
 
The world, as we perceive it, is our own invention.
 
If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative.
 
The war, of course, furnished many examples of this pattern: the casual fact, the creative imagination, the will to believe, and out of these three elements, a counterfeit of reality to which there was a violent instinctive response. For it is clear enough that under certain conditions men respond as powerfully to fictions as they do to realities, and that in many cases they help to create the very fictions to which they respond.
 
If a million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
 
Anything that can be said can be said clearly.
 
Anything that makes it easier to imagine trading places with someone else increases your moral consideration for that other person.
 
We know the meaning so long as no one asks us to define it.
 
Human freedom is not an illusion; it is an objective phenomenon, distinct from all other biological conditions and found in only one species - us.
 
The love of economy is the root of all virtue.
 
I will not propose to you that my way is best. The decision is up to you. If you find some point which may be suitable to you, then you can carry out experiments for yourself. If you find that it is of no use, then you can discard it.
 
Always behave like a duck - keep calm and unruffled on the surface but paddle like the devil underneath.
 
Activity is the only road to knowledge.
 
There is a secret to live a happy life, but it remains, in fact, a secret.
 
If in this moment I were to go mad, my madness would consist of sitting always with my eyes staring, my mouth open, and my hands between my knees, without laughing or crying, or even moving except for sheer necessity. I haven't the least urge to conceive a desire, not even for death. . . . This is the first time that noia [boredom or spleen] not only presses and tires me but harries and rips like the sharpest pain.
 
The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next. 
 
When I am furious about something, I sometimes beat the ground or a tree with my walking stick. But I certainly do not believe that the ground is to blame or that my beating can help anything... And all rites are of this kind.
 
2718 quotes