Peirastes

"I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think."

"I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers which can't be questioned."

"If someone can prove me wrong and show me my mistake in any thought and action, I shall gladly change. I seek the truth, which never harmed anyone: the harm is to persist in one's own self-deception and ignorance."

"In the sciences, the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man."

"I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses."

"An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory."

"Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach."

"Educate the children and it won't be necessary to punish the men."

"It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men."

"Much learning does not teach understanding."

"Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible."

"Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas."

"Knowledge is of no value unless you put it into practice."

"Start by doing what's necessary; then do what's possible; and suddenly you are doing the impossible."

"Devote the rest of your life to making progress."

"The greatest right in the world is the right to be wrong."

"All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride."

"If the path before you is clear, you're probably on someone else's."

"Trust only movement. Life happens at the level of events, not of words. Trust movement."

"Let no one persuade you by word or deed to do or say whatever is not best for you."

"Be wary of the man who urges an action in which he himself incurs no risk."

"Every effort which is scientifically applied, rational, useful, or practical, must be in the direction in which the mass is moving. The practical, rational man, the observer, the man of business, he who reasons, calculates, or determines in advance, carefully applies his effort so that when coming into effect it will be in the direction of the movement, making it thus most efficient, and in this knowledge and ability lies the secret of his success."

"We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of the past and the cause of the future. An intellect which at any given moment knew all of the forces that animate nature and the mutual positions of the beings that compose it, if this intellect were vast enough to submit the data to analysis, could condense into a single formula the movement of the greatest bodies of the universe and that of the lightest atom; for such an intellect nothing could be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes."

"From the point of view of basic physics, the most interesting phenomena are of course in the new places, the places where the rules do not work—not the places where they do work! That is the way in which we discover new rules."

"Science is a differential equation. Religion is a boundary condition."

"Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions shattered."

"Those who are able to see beyond the shadows and lies of their culture will never be understood, let alone believed, by the masses."

"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it."

"Whatever is contrary to nature is contrary to reason, and whatsoever is contrary to reason is absurd."

"We must love them both, those whose opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject, for both have labored in the search for truth, and both have helped us in finding it."

"We find comfort among those who agree with us – growth among those who don't."

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

"All things are subject to interpretation. Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth."

"The high-minded man must care more for the truth than for what people think."

"People don't realize how hard it is to speak the truth to a world full of people that don't realize they're living a lie."

"There is but one thing of real value — to cultivate truth and justice, and to live without anger in the midst of lying and unjust men."

"It is the duty of every man, as far as his ability extends, to detect and expose delusion and error."

"Conformity is doing what you're told regardless of what's right; Morality is doing what's right regardless of what you're told."

"To think is easy. To act is difficult. To act as one thinks is the most difficult of all."

"The secret of freedom lies in educating the people, whereas the secret of tyranny is keeping them ignorant."

"Seek freedom and find yourself captive to your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty."

"A general dissolution of principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy. While the people are virtuous, they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their virtue then will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader."

"A free society is one that is not rendered artificially homogenous by politically correct speech codes and self-appointed guardians of multiculturalism, diversity, and morality. Freedom of speech in society means that all citizens must be willing to ignore offensive speech against themselves and their beliefs."

"If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter."

"Without debate, without criticism, no Administration and no country can succeed — and no republic can survive. That is why the Athenian lawmaker Solon decreed it a crime for any citizen to shrink from controversy."

"Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has a right to, but himself."

"No people will tamely surrender their liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved. On the contrary, when people are universally ignorant, and debauched in their manners, they will sink under their own weight without the aid of foreign invaders."

"There is simply no comparison between a man who is armed and one who is not. It is simply unreasonable to expect that an armed man should obey one who is unarmed, or that an unarmed man should remain safe and secure when his servants are armed."

"Mankind is at its best when it is most free. This will be clear if we grasp the principle of liberty. We must recall that the basic principle is freedom of choice which saying many have on their lips but few in their minds."

"No man on earth is truly free. All are slaves of money or necessity. Public opinion or fear of prosecution forces each one, against his conscience, to conform."

"There is no such thing as freedom of choice unless there is freedom to refuse."

"Some men change their party for the sake of their principles; others their principles for the sake of their party."

"Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility."

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber barons' cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

"The greatest tyrannies are always perpetrated in the name of the noblest causes."

"The welfare of the people has always been the alibi of tyrants."

"The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny."

"Those who voluntarily put power into the hands of a tyrant… must not wonder if it be at last turned against themselves."

"There's nothing in the world so demoralizing as money."

"An honorable Peace is and always was my first wish! I can take no delight in the effusion of human Blood; but, if this War should continue, I wish to have the most active part in it."

"[T]he statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."

"Remember that anything approaching diplomatic negotiations with Russia… is now being criminalized in the United States. Criminalized. What was once an honorable tradition — the pursuit of détente — is now a capital crime."

"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."

"To make a contented slave it is necessary to make a thoughtless one. It is necessary to darken the moral and mental vision and, as far as possible, to annihilate the power of reason."

"There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them."

"Wisdom comes alone through suffering. Trouble, with its memories of pain, Drips in our hearts as we try to sleep, So men against their will Learn to practice moderation. Favours come to us from gods."

"If you had not suffered as you have, there would be no depth to you as a human being, no humility, no compassion."

"Only through experience of trial and suffering can the soul be strengthened, vision cleared, ambition inspired, and success achieved."

"The wise man accepts his pain, endures it, but does not add to it."

"To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering."

"What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for some goal worthy of him."

"All suffering originates from craving, from attachment, from desire?"

"I can bear any pain as long as it has meaning."

"Courage isn't having the strength to go on — it is going on when you don't have strength."

"The path to paradise begins in hell."

"He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears."

"Only during hard times do people come to understand how difficult it is to be master of their feelings and thoughts."

"When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves."

"Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor."

"To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly."

"The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new."

"There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious."

"They fear love because it creates a world they can't control."

"Love casts out fear; but conversely fear casts out love. And not only love. Fear also casts out intelligence, casts out goodness, casts out all thought of beauty and truth."

"Let no man pull you so low as to hate him."

"Acting on your anger makes everything worse than just feeling your anger."

"If it is true, as I have tried to show, that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence, then any society which excludes, relatively, the development of love, must in the long run perish of its own contradiction with the basic necessities of human nature."

"Collective fear stimulates herd instinct and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd."

"Boys and girls should be taught respect for each other's liberty; they should be made to feel that nothing gives one human being rights over another, and that jealousy and possessiveness kill love."

"I would rather feel compassion than know the meaning of it. I would hope to act with compassion without thinking of personal gain."

"Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate."

"We will become our opposite if we do not learn to accommodate the opposition within us."

"Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster, and if you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you."

"It is not easy to maintain a coherent sense of identity, self-worth, or competence in the face of multiple and chronic challenges to old patterns."

"People do not seem to realize that their opinion of the world is also a confession of their character."

"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present."

"Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist."

"The nearer a man comes to a calm mind, the closer he is to strength."

"Circumstances do not make the man, they reveal him."

"More is lost by indecision than wrong decision."

"I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become."

"You become what you give your attention to."