Sir Thomas More

For men use, if they have an evil turn, to write it in marble: and whoso doth us a good turn we write it in dust.

I die the king's faithful servant, but God's first.

This hath not offended the king.

The island of Utopia is in the middle two hundred miles broad, and holds almost at the same breadth over a great part of it, but it grows narrower towards both ends.

I must say, extreme justice is an extreme injury: For we ought not to approve of those terrible laws that make the smallest offences capital, nor of that opinion of the Stoics that makes all crimes equal; as if there were no difference to be made between the killing a man and the taking his purse, between which, if we examine things impartially, there is no likeness nor proportion

They have but few laws, and such is their constitution that they need not many.

Other rocks lie under water, and are very dangerous. The channel is known only to the natives; so that if any stranger should enter into the bay without one of their pilots he would run great danger of shipwreck.

In no victory do they glory so much as in that which is gained by dexterity and good conduct without bloodshed.

Allan Bloom

Socrates’ way of life is the consequence of his recognition that we can know what it is that we do not know about the most important things and that we are by nature obliged to seek that knowledge.

We witness a strange inversion: on the one hand, the endeavor to turn the social contract into a less calculating and more feeling connection among its members; on the other hand, the endeavor to turn the erotic relationship into a contractual one.

Plato … says a multitude can never philosophize and hence can never recognize the seriousness of philosophy or who really philosophizes. Attempted to influence the multitude results in forced prostitution.

Bacon, Locke, Descartes, Hume, and all the others knew they were giving rights to vulgarity. But in so doing—in addition to caring for man’s well-being—they were providing rights for themselves.

Did Romeo and Juliet have a … “relationship”? The term “relationship” … betokens a chaste egalitarianism leveling different ranks and degrees of attachment.

Louis Brandeis

The intensity and complexity of life, attendant upon advancing civilization, have rendered necessary some retreat from the world . . .

When a man feels that he cannot leave his work, it is a sure sign of an impending collapse.

What are the American ideals? They are the development of the individual for his own and the common good; the development of the individual through liberty, and the attainment of the common good through democracy and social justice.

If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.

The court bows to the lessons of experience and the force of better reasoning, recognizing that the process of trial and error, so fruitful in the physical sciences, is appropriate also in the judicial function.

Ownership has been separated from control; and this separation has removed many of the checks which formerly operated to curb the misuse of wealth and power.

Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette

Humanity has gained its suit; Liberty will nevermore be without an asylum.

When the government violates the people's rights, insurrection is, for the people and for each portion of the people, the most sacred of the rights and the most indispensable of duties.

True republicanism is the sovereignty of the people. There are natural and imprescriptible rights which an entire nation has no right to violate...

I read, I study, I examine, I listen, I reflect, and out of all of this I try to form an idea into which I put as much common sense as I can.

An irresistible passion that would induce me to believe in innate ideas, and the truth of prophecy, has decided my career. I have always loved liberty with the enthusiasm which actuates the religious man with the passion of a lover, and with the conviction of a geometrician.

Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (physician father of the jurist)

I find that the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it— but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.

Ay, tear her tattered ensign down!
Long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky

You can never be too cautious in your prognosis, in the view of the great uncertainty of the course of any disease not long watched, and the many unexpected turns it may take.

Love is the master-key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and, most easily of all, the gate of fear. How terrible is the one fact of beauty!

A pun does not commonly justify a blow in return. But if a blow were given for such cause, and death ensued, the jury would be judges both of the facts and of the pun, and might, if the latter were of an aggravated character, return a verdict of justifiable homicide.

Put not your trust in money, but put your money in trust.

Knowledge and timber shouldn't be much used, till they are seasoned.

Leverage is everything,—was what I used to say;—don't begin to pry till you have got the long arm on your side.

Anatole France

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.

If it were absolutely necessary to choose, I would rather be guilty of an immoral act than of a cruel one.

To accomplish great things we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.

Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.

When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple: take it and copy it.

He flattered himself on being a man without any prejudices; and this pretension itself is a very great prejudice.

Man is so made that he can only find relaxation from one kind of labor by taking up another.

It is by acts, and not by ideas that people live.

Irony is the gaiety of reflection and the joy of wisdom.

You appear to me to have no arts and not to work in metals. But your hearts are pure and your hands are innocent, and the truth will easily enter into your souls.

It was high time for a generous benefactor to come to the relief of our necessities.

Evelyn Waugh

The human mind is inspired enough when it comes to inventing horrors; it is when it tries to invent a Heaven that it shows itself cloddish.

Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else.

Punctuality is the virtue of the bored.

It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.

I put the words down and push them a bit.

I came to the conclusion many years ago that almost all crime is due to the repressed desire for aesthetic expression.

It is a curious thing... that every creed promises a paradise which will be absolutely uninhabitable for anyone of civilized taste.

To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.

My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time.

In the dying world I come from, quotation is a national vice. No one would think of making an after-dinner speech without the help of poetry. It used to be the classics, now it's lyric verse.

Vincent van Gogh

Being friends, being brothers, loving, that is what opens the prison, with supreme power, by some magic force. Without these one stays dead. But whenever affection is revived, there life revives.

I feel that there is nothing more truly artistic than to love people.

A good picture is equivalent to a good deed.

The work is an absolute necessity for me. I can't put it off...

I dream my painting, and then I paint my dream.

I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost.

I am good for something! My existence is not without reason! I know that I could be a quite a different person! How can I be of use, how can I be of service?

It is possible that everything will get better after it has all seemed to go wrong. I am not counting on it, it may never happen, but if there should be a change for the better I should regard that as a gain, I should rejoice, I should say, at last! So there was something after all!

I have grief enough and trouble enough, but as for regrets — neither of us have any. Look here — I believe without question, or have the certain knowledge, that she loves me. I believe without question, or have the certain knowledge, that I love her. It has been sincerely meant.

John Tyndall

It is as fatal as it is cowardly to blink facts because they are not to our taste.

Knowledge once gained casts a faint light beyond its own immediate boundaries.

Life is a wave, which in no two consecutive moments of its existence is composed of the same particles.

The brightest flashes in the world of thought are incomplete until they have been proved to have their counterparts in the world of fact.

Superstition may be defined as constructive religion which has grown incongruous with intelligence.

Religious feeling is as much a verity as any other part of human consciousness; and against it, on the subjective side, the waves of science beat in vain.

The mind of man may be compared to a musical instrument with a certain range of notes, beyond which in both directions we have an infinitude of silence.

We have heard much of Faraday's gentleness and sweetness and tenderness. It is all true, but it is very incomplete.

Underneath his [Faraday] sweetness and gentleness was the heat of a volcano. He was a man of excitable and fiery nature; but through high self-discipline he had converted the fire into a central glow and motive power of life, instead of permitting it to waste itself in useless passion.

Thucydides

In fine, I have written my work, not as an essay which is to win the applause of the moment, but as a possession for all time.

The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.

Hatred also is short lived; but that which makes the splendor of the present and the glory of the future remains forever unforgotten.

They stood where they stood by the power of the sword.

And it is certain that those who do not yield to their equals, who keep terms with their superiors, and are moderate towards their inferiors, on the whole succeed best.

Hatred also is short lived; but that which makes the splendor of the present and the glory of the future remains forever unforgotten.

But the prize for courage will surely be awarded most justly to those who best know the difference between hardship and pleasure and yet are never tempted to shrink from danger.

I could have wished that the reputations of many brave men were not to be imperilled in the mouth of a single individual, to stand or fall according as he spoke well or ill. For it is hard to speak properly upon a subject where it is even difficult to convince your hearers that you are speaking the truth.