It is base to take advantage of our rank or greatness by making fun of those placed beneath us in life.

Pettiness of mind, ignorance and presumption are the cause of stubbornness, because stubborn people only want to believe what they themselves can imagine, and they can imagine very few things.

To be too dissatisfied with ourselves is a weakness. To be too satisfied with ourselves is a stupidity.

It is a singular characteristic of love that we cannot hide it where it exists, or pretend it where it does not exist.

We prefer people who are trying to imitate us more than those who are trying to equal us. This is because imitation is a sign of esteem, but the desire to equal others is a sign of envy.

Honest and sincere acts mislead the wicked and cause them to lose their path to their own goals, because mean-spirited people usually believe that people never act without deceit.

It is vain and useless to survey everything that goes on in the world if our study does not help us mend our ways.

Sometimes we praise the way things used to be in order to blame the present, and we esteem what is no longer in order to scorn what is.

Mean-spirited mediocrities, especially those with a smattering of learning, are the most likely to be opinionated. Only strong minds know how to correct their opinions and abandon a bad position.

Even the best-natured people, if uninstructed, are always blind and uncertain. We must take pains to instruct ourselves so that ignorance makes us neither too timid nor too bold.

Criticism should awaken our attention, not inflame our anger. We should listen to, and not flee from, those who contradict us. Truth should be our cause, no matter in what manner it comes to us.

He loved Shevek, but he could not show him what freedom is, that recognition of each person's solitude which alone transcends it.

Any society that justifies violence against any human being for any reason will be a violent society. It will ultimately infect and affect the whole society. Everyone will suffer.

I believe that hope, imagination, and dreams create our destiny.

As above in consciousness, so below in matter

It is so small a thing to have enjoyed the sun, to have lived light in the spring, to have loved, to have thought, to have done.

The most important thing in a game like that is to win it.

Words are more ardent if a man must struggle to find them.

My memoirs are full of humor, I had to change jokes because it was a little too dark.

I can attack a man's weakness and beat him. Or I can attack a man's strengths and break him.

Stay a child while you can be a child.