What is philosophy? It is something that lightens up, that makes bright.

In everything the ends well defined are the secret of durable success.

All truly historical peoples have an idea they must realize, and when they have sufficiently exploited it at home, they export it, in a certain way, by war; they make it tour the world.

Ignorance is the primary source of all misery and vice.

You can only govern men by serving them.

The universal and absolute law is that natural justice which cannot be written down, but which appeals to the hearts of all.

Written laws are formulas in which we endeavor to express as concisely as possible that which, under such or such determined circumstances, natural justice demands.

We need religion for religions's sake, morality for morality's sake and art for art's sake.

True philosophy invents nothing; it merely establishes and describes what is.

The beautiful cannot be the way to what is useful, or to what is good, or to what is holy; it leads only to itself.

If ignorance is bliss, there should be more happy people.

I think leadership is something you earn, more through actions than words.

You will find truth more quickly through delight than gravity. Let out a little more string on your kite.

Self-respect is the fruit of discipline; the sense of dignity grows with the ability to say no to oneself.

If you could count the skeletons in my closet, under my bed and up under my faucet, then you would know I've completely lost it. Is he nuts? No he's insane!

The imagination never forgets; it is a re-membering. It is not foundationless, but most reasonable, and it alone uses all the knowledge of the intellect.

The paradox of American democracy has been that its slogan of equal opportunity has meant, often, equal opportunity to get power over your fellows.

It always takes awhile to find out who the characters are.

The miracle of your being cannot escape itself. Your thoughts blossom into events. Your beliefs grow as surely in time and space as flowers do.

I love gothic monsters, but I like to root them more firmly in the traditional folklore from which they sprang. Or at least, I like to evoke the feeling of those folk stories.

It is no good my telling you. One never believes other people's experiencem and one is only very gradually convinced by one's own.