“The most tyrannical of governments are those which make crimes of opinions, for everyone has an inalienable right to his thoughts.”

Happiness is a virtue, not its reward.

He who seeks equality between unequals seeks an absurdity.

The more you struggle to live, the less you live. Give up the notion that you must be sure of what you are doing. Instead, surrender to what is real within you, for that alone is sure, you are above everything distressing.

All happiness or unhappiness solely depends upon the quality of the object to which we are attached by love.

Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.

Men are mistaken in thinking themselves free; their opinion is made up of consciousness of their own actions, and ignorance of the causes by which they are determined.

Be not astonished at new ideas; for it is well known to you that a thing does not therefore cease to be true because it is not accepted by many.

In practical life we are compelled to follow what is most probable ; in speculative thought we are compelled to follow truth.

Men govern nothing with more difficulty than their tongues, and can moderate their desires more than their words.

What everyone wants from life is continuous and genuine happiness.

I would warn you that I do not attribute to nature either beauty or deformity, order or confusion. Only in relation to our imagination can things be called beautiful or ugly, well-ordered or confused.

I have striven not to laugh at human actions, not to weep at them, nor to hate them, but to understand them.

Emotion, which is suffering, ceases to be suffering as soon as we form a clear and precise picture of it.

Sadness diminishes a man’s powers.

Freedom is self-determination.

In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect, it participates in eternity.

Life and liberty can be as much endangered from illegal methods used to convict those thought to be criminals as from the actual criminals themselves.

I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down, Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town, I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime, But is there because he’s a victim of the times.

The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind.

Too much mercy often resulted in further crimes which were fatal to innocent victims who need not have been victims if justice had been put first and mercy second.

Criminals are never very amusing. It’s because they’re failures. Those who make real money aren’t counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem.

We shall go down in history as the greatest statesmen of all time, or as the greatest criminals.

We must link Azamgarh to art and culture and not with terrorism and crime.

A great cause of evil in the world is that men seldom think themselves criminal if they offer the same injustice to others that has been successfully practiced on themselves.