A society like the Church, which claims to be Divine is perhaps more dangerous on account of the ersatz good which it contains then on account of the evil which sullies it. Something of the social labelled divine: an intoxicating mixture which carries with it every sort of license. Devil disguised.
There is a certain kind of morality which is even more alien to good and evil than amorality is.
We should do only those righteous actions which we cannot stop ourselves from doing.
Concern for the symbol has completely disappeared from our science . And yet, if one were to give oneself the trouble, one could easily find, in certain parts at least of contemporary mathematics... symbols as clear, as beautiful, and as full of spiritual meaning as that of the circle and mediation. From modern thought to ancient wisdom the path would be short and direct, if one cared to take it.
science has now been for a long time - and to an ever-increasing extent - a collective enterprise. Actually, new results are always, in fact, the work of specific individuals; but, save perhaps for rare exceptions, the value of any result depends on such a complex set of interrelations with past discoveries and possible future researches that even the mind of the inventor cannot embrace the whole.
Punishment is a vital need of the human soul.
We possess nothing in the world - a mere chance can strip us of everything - except the power to say 'I.
To set up as a standard of public morality a notion which can neither be defined nor conceived is to open the door to every kind of tyranny.
A man whose mind feels that it is captive would prefer to blind himself to the fact. But if he hates falsehood, he will not do so; and in that case he will have to suffer a lot. He will beat his head against the wall until he faints. He will come to again
It is not enough that France should be regarded as a country which enjoys the remains of a freedom acquired long ago. If she is still to count in the world--and if she does not intend to, she may as well perish--she must be seen by her own citizens and by all men as an ever-flowing source of liberty. There must not be a single genuine lover of freedom in the whole world who can have a valid reason for hating France.
Evil is neither suffering nor sin; it is both at the same time, it is something common to them both. For they are linked together; sin makes us suffer and suffering makes us evil, and this indissoluble complex of suffering and sin is the evil in which we are submerged against our will, and to our horror.
Someone who does not see a pane of glass is not aware of not seeing it.
A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much.
It may be that vice, depravity, and crime are nearly always, or even perhaps always, in their essence, attempts to eat beauty, to eat what we should only look at.
To get power over is to defile. To possess is to defile.
Justice, truth, and beauty are sisters and comrades. With three such beautiful words we have no need to look for any others.
Men owe us what we imagine they will give us. We must forgive them this debt.
The full expression of personality depends upon its being inflated by social prestige; it is a social privilege.
Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat.
The necessity for power is obvious, because life cannot be lived without order; but the allocation of power is arbitrary because all men are alike, or very nearly. Yet power must not seem to be arbitrarily allocated, because it will not then be recognized as power. Therefore prestige, which is illusion, is of the very essence of power.
Mathematics alone make us feel the limits of our intelligence. For we can always suppose in the case of an experiment that it is inexplicable because we don't happen to have all the data. In mathematics we have all the data, brought together in the full light of demonstration, and yet we don't understand. We always come back to the contemplation of our human wretchedness. What force is in relation to our will, the impenetrable opacity of mathematics is in relation to our intelligence.
Time does us violence; it is the only violence.
Armies under the control of ... a sovereign State cannot bring freedom to anyone.
It is impossible that the whole of truth should not be present at every time and every place, available for anyone who desires it.
Electra weeping for the dead Orestes. If we love God while thinking that he does not exist, he will manifest his existence.
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