Society and the World

It is only by not paying one’s bills that one can hope to live in the memory of the commercial classes.

You can’t make people good by Act of Parliament.

All authority is quite degrading. It degrades those who exercise it, and degrades those over whom it is exercised.

The true perfection of man lies, not in what man has, but in what man is.

The recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses.

The recognition of private property has really harmed Individualism, and obscured it, by confusing a man with what he possesses.

Crime belongs exclusively to the lower orders. I don’t blame them in the smallest degree. I should fancy that crime was to them what art is to us, simply a method of procuring extraordinary sensations.

Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.

Modern morality consists in accepting the standard of one’s age. I consider that for any man of culture to accept the standard of his age is a form of the grossest immorality.

The Real War Will Never Get in the Books . And so good-bye to the war.

Passage to India.

Walt Whitman, a kosmos, of Manhattan the son,

The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.

The science of pure mathematics, in its modern developments, may claim to be the most original creation of the human spirit.

To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two very differentthings, as the history of a science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

To come very near to a true theory, and to grasp its precise application, are two very differentthings, as the history of a science teaches us. Everything of importance has been said before by somebody who did not discover it.

It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle—they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisivemoments.

Wisdom is higher than a fool can reach.

In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom; it is impatient of oppression, and pants for deliverance; and by the leave of our modern Egyptians I will assert, that the same principle lives in us.

In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom; it is impatient of oppression, and pants for deliverance; and by the leave of our modern Egyptians I will assert, that the same principle lives in us.

’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

The worst of doing one’s duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.

The worst of doing one’s duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else.

Are we not Men?