History reports that the men who can manage men manage the men who can manage only things, and the men who can manage money manage all.

In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.

In the end, nothing is lost. Every event, for good or evil, has effects forever.

In the last 3,421 years of recorded history only 268 have seen no war.

Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies.

You can’t fool all the people all the time,” but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.

To rulers religion, like almost everything else, is a tool of power.

[N]o language has ever had a word for a virgin man.

History is an excellent teacher with few pupils.

The fear of capitalism has compelled socialism to widen freedom, and the fear of socialism has compelled capitalism to increase equality. East is West and West is East, and soon the twain will meet.

If we rated greatness by the influence of the great, we will say "Muhammad is the greatest of the great in history

By and large the poor have the same impulses as the rich, with only less opportunity or skill to implement them

One of the lessons of history is that the gods can be silent in many languages.

Read, think well of mankind, go to our libraries and rejoice.

History is mostly guessing, the rest is prejudice.

We have here the fundamental problem of ethics, the crux of the theory of moral conduct. What is justice? -shall we seek righteousness, or shall we seek power? -is it better to be good, or to be strong?

The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past.

Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice.

Our knowledge is a receding mirage in an expanding desert of ignorance.

Nature has never read the Declaration of Independence. It continues to make us unequal.

The older Romans used temples as their banks, as we use banks as our temples;

But now and then liberty, in the slogans of the strong, means freedom from restraint in the exploitation of the weak.

But the new generation had tasted the wine of philosophy; and from this time onward the rich youth of Rome went eagerly to Athens and Rhodes to exchange their oldest faith for the newest doubts.

A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within

Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent.

The present is the past rolled up for action, and the past is the present unrolled for understanding

Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt—particularly to doubt one’s cherished beliefs, one’s dogmas and one’s axioms.

...but which of us has read every line of the Iliad, or the Aeneid, or The Divine Comedy, or Paradise Lost? Only men of epic stomach can digest these epic tales.

Nothing is impossible to gods and authors.

When the universe has crushed him man will still be nobler than that which kills him, because he knows that he is dying, and of its victory the universe knows nothing.

It is not the race that makes the civilization, it is the civilization that makes the people: circumstances geographical, economic, and political create a culture, and the culture creates a human type.

Morality, said Jesus, is kindness to the weak; morality, said Nietzsche, is the bravery of the strong; morality, says Plato, is the effective harmony of the whole.

Facts" replaced understanding; and knowledge, split into a thousand isolated fragments, no longer generated wisdom.

The form of Christianity that developed in Europe and later spread to America and the rest of the world was the last great creation of the ancient pagan world.

In its youth a people produce mythology and poetry; in its decadence, philosophy and logic.

This is the tragedy of almost every civilization—that its soul is in its faith, and seldom survives philosophy.

Normally and generally men are judged by their ability to produce—except in war, when they are ranked according to their ability to destroy.

To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy.

When a man is interested in the past he writes history; when he is interested in the future he makes it.

To confer a kindness is a mark of superiority; to receive one is a mark of subordination . . .

But he had gained a perspective of thought in which every extreme was seen as a half-truth,

I thank God,” he used to say, “that I was born Greek and not barbarian, freeman and not slave, man and not woman; but above all, that I was born in the age of

For what is philosophy but an art - one more attempt to give "significant form" to the chaos of experience?

Progress is the domination of chaos by mind and purpose, of matter by form and will. It need not be continuous to be real.

There are not many things finer in our murderous species than this noble curiosity, this restless and reckless passion to understand.

Civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice.

Human behavior, says Plato, flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

The worst conceivable government would be by philosophers; they botch every natural process with theory; their ability to make speeches and multiply ideas is precisely the sign of their incapacity for action.

There is no real philosophy until the mind turns round and examines itself.

Economic development specializes functions, differentiates abilities, and makes men unequally valuable to their group.