“Those only are happy (I thought) who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness.”

When one’s ideas are not challenged, one’s ability to defend them weakens.

In all intellectual debates, both sides tend to be correct in what they affirm, and wrong in what they deny.

Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think.

A person should be free to do as he likes in his own concerns; but he ought not to be free to do as he likes in acting for another, under the pretext that the affairs of the other are his own affairs.

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being.

A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic institutions in detail, but confined to the central government, not only is not political freedom, but often creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political domination.

The individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself.

What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their inability to act according to their beliefs.

Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.

I have learned to seek my happiness by limiting my desires, rather than in attempting to satisfy them.

All good things which exist are the fruits of originality.

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question.

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

The spirit of improvement is not always a spirit of liberty, for it may aim at forcing improvements on an unwilling people.

He who does anything because it is the custom, makes no choice.

Solitude in the presence of natural beauty and grandeur is the cradle of thought and aspirations which are not only good for the individual, but which society can ill do without.

Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren’t present.

Never fight an inanimate object.

Just as an object may move in three perpendicular directions, corresponding to horizontal, vertical, and longitudinal, so an object may participate in three perpendicular futures.

Justice is conscience, not a personal conscience but the conscience of the whole of humanity. Those who clearly recognize the voice of their own conscience usually recognize also the voice of justice.

I love trying to render not just the object, but what it has been through.

Talent is always conscious of its own abundance, and does not object to sharing.

The objective of a referee is not to get mentioned. I tell a lot of young referees that not being mentioned is king.

No temptation can ever be measured by the value of its object.