White Fang knew the law well: to oppress the weak and obey the strong.

"Shortcut.' The word filled me with dread. When has a shortcut ever worked out as planned? The word – in a horror film at least – usually precedes disembowelment and death. A 'shortcut' almost...

I wonder why reality has to be simple. My experience has taught me that, on the contrary, it is rarely so, and when there is something that seems extraordinarily clear, an action that appears to obey...

Life appears as a long nightmare in this reasoning, from which one can be freed through death, which would then be a kind of awakening. But awakening to what? That irresoluble moment of throwing...

I learned the tyranny of figures before I knew the value of a pound.

Your separateness could kill you unless I take it from you as a sickness.

The paradox seems to be, as Socrates demonstrated long ago, that the truly free individual is free only to the extent of his own self-mastery. While those who will not govern themselves are condemned...

and when the hour is come that has been set for each of us before ever we can walk or talk, then what need of mourning?

The feet bear the burden of the body, the head the burden of the mind, and the heart the burden of the spirit.

WELL, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, the Stella Maris is on her way out of the solar system

It is a scholar's task to find patterns in nature or cycles in history. Initially, it's no different from finding portraits of animals and heroes in the stars. The question is, Have you discovered a...

Denial is a critical part of the human coping mechanism. Without it, we would all wake up terrified every morning about all the ways we could die. Instead, our minds block out our existential fears by...

In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the...

It is a fact verified and recorded in many histories that the soul capable of the greatest good is also capable of the greatest evil. Who is there more impious than a backsliding priest? Who more...

blissful as ignorance

Is there a better method of departure by night than this quiet bon voyage with an open book, the sole companion who has come to see you off, to wave you into the dark waters beyond language?

The Council of Scholars has said that we all know the things which exist and therefore the things which are not known by all do not exist.

He had not liked the things taught to him in college. He had been taught a great deal about social responsibility, about a life of service and self-sacrifice. Everybody had said it was beautiful and...

We cannot say what they meant, for there are no words for their meaning, but we know it without words and we knew it then.

You'll get everything society can give a man. You'll keep all the money. You'll take any fame or honor anyone might want to grant. You'll accept such gratitude as the tenants might feel. And I - I'll...

And here, over the portals of my fort, I shall cut in the stone the word which is to be my beacon and my banner. The word which will not die should we all perish in battle. The word which can never...

Is Euclidian geometry true or is Riemann geometry true? He answered, The question has no meaning. As well ask whether the metric system is true and the avoirdupois system is false; whether Cartesian...

Areté implies a respect for the wholeness or oneness of life, and a consequent dislike of specialization. It implies a contempt for efficiency—or rather a much higher idea of efficiency, an...

And the definition of that person, when he has rejected the mythos, is "insane." To

Yah-da, yah-da, yah-da, yah-da, yah, carburetor, gear ratio, compression, yah-da-yah, piston, plugs, intake, yah-da-yah, on and on and on. That is the romantic face of the classic mode. Dull, awkward...

When people are fanatically dedicated to political or religious faiths or any other kinds of dogmas or goals, it's always because these dogmas or goals are in doubt.

The Buddha, the Divine, dwells in the circuit of a computer or in the gears of a motorcycle's transmission with the same ease as it does at the top of a mountain or in the petals of a flower.

He wasn't going to send her to any hospital. He knew that now. At a hospital they'd just start shooting her full of drugs and tell her to adjust. What they wouldn't see is that she is adjusting....

The real cycle you're working on is a cycle called yourself.

Life is a perpetual yesterday for us.