“To knock a thing down when it is cocked at an arrogant angle is a deep delight of the blood.”

“Since the days of Descartes it has been a conception familiar to philosophers that every visible event in nature might be explained by previous visible events, and that all the motions, for instance, of the tongue in speech, or of the hand in painting, might have merely physical causes. If consciousness is thus accessory to life and not essential to it, the race of man might have existed upon the earth and acquired all the arts necessary for its subsistence without possessing a single sensation, idea, or emotion. Natural selection might have secured the survival of those automata which made useful reactions upon their environment. An instinct would have been developed, dangers would have been shunned without being feared, and injuries avenged without being felt.”

“The difficulty, after having the experience to symbolize, lies only in having enough imagination to suspend it in a thought; and further to give this thought such verbal expression that others may be able to decipher it, and to be stirred by it as by a wind of suggestion sweeping the whole forest of their memories.”

“All conditions are bearable, all dignities trumpery, and wisdom simply the gift of making the best of whatever is thrust upon us.”

“The Difficult is that which can be done immediately; the Impossible that which takes a little longer.”

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

“if you don’t stand up for yourselves, how can you stand up for anybody else?” 

“The first step toward speaking for others is speaking for ourselves.” 

“why shouldnt things be largely absurd, futile, and transitory? they are so, and we are so, and they and we go together.”

“Nothing is really so poor and melancholy as art that is interested in itself and not in its subject.”

“History is a pack of lies about events that never happened told by people who weren't there. . . . History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten”

“Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.”

“The wisest mind has something yet to learn.”

“Fanaticism consists of redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.”

Memory... is an internal rumor.

Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness

There are books in which the footnotes, or the comments scrawled by some reader's hand in the margin, are more interesting than the text. The world is one of those books.

To be happy you must have taken the measure of your powers, tasted the fruits of your passion, and learned your place in the world.

My atheism, like that of Spinoza, is true piety towards the universe and denies only gods fashioned by men in their own image, to be servants of their human interests.

“Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.” 

"Courage brother, do not stumble, though thy path be dark as night: There is a star to guide the humble, trust in God, and do the right. Let the road be dark and dreary and its end far out of sight. Face it bravely, strong or weary. Trust God, and do"

“True courage is being afraid, and going ahead and doing your job anyhow, that's what courage is.” 

“Only after I saw women who were attracted to distant, condescending, even violent men did I begin to understand that having a distant, condescending, even violent father could make those qualities seem inevitable, even feel like home. Because of my father, only kindness felt like home.” 

“This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed.”