“There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more.”
“He was impregnably armored by his good intentions and his ignorance.”
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
“Whether a man is a criminal or a public servant is purely a matter of perspective.”
“Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.”
“Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil.”
“If you want to test cosmetics, why do it on some poor animal who hasn t done anything? They should use prisoners who have been convicted of murder or rape instead. So, rather than seeing if perfume irritates a bunny rabbit s eyes, they should throw it in Charles Manson s eyes and ask him if it hurts.”
“For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable – what then?”
“I count him braver who overcomes his desires than him who conquers his enemies, for the hardest victory is over self.”
“The word good has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.”
“One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. Good is no longer good when one s neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a common good ! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.”
“Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.”
“People often say that humans have always eaten animals, as if this is a justification for continuing the practice. According to this logic, we should not try to prevent people from murdering other people, since this has also been done since the earliest of times.”
“We have a choice. We have two options as human beings. We have a choice between conversation and war. That s it. Conversation and violence. And faith is a conversation stopper.”
“The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.”
“I suppose therefore that all things I see are illusions; I believe that nothing has ever existed of everything my lying memory tells me. I think I have no senses. I believe that body, shape, extension, motion, location are functions. What is there then that can be taken as true? Perhaps only this one thing, that nothing at all is certain.”
“Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.”