“How can a rational being be ennobled by any thing that is not obtained by its own exertions?”

In short, women, in general, as well as the rich of both sexes, have acquired all the follies and vices of civilization, and missed the useful fruit.

Without the aid of the imagination all the pleasures of the senses must sink into grossness.

Independence I have long considered as the grand blessing of life, the basis of every virtue; and independence I will ever secure by contracting my wants, though I were to live on a barren heath.

Either nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the world is not yet anywhere near to being fully civilized.

I like to use significant words.

I have sighed when obliged to confess that either Nature has made a great difference between man and man, or that the civilization which has hitherto taken place in the world has been very partial.

My dreams were all my own; I accounted for them to nobody; they were my refuge when annoyed – my dearest pleasure when free.

Thus do we wish as we float down the stream of life, whilst chance does more to gratify our desire for knowledge than our best-laid plans.

Taught from their infancy that beauty is woman’s sceptre, the mind shapes itself to the body, and roaming round its gilt cage, only seeks to adorn its prison.

No man chooses evil because it is evil; he just mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.

Men, in general, seem to employ their reason to justify prejudices, rather than to root them out.

Into this error men have, probably, been led by viewing education in a false light; not considering it as the first step to form a being advancing gradually towards perfection; but only as a preparation for life.

All power inebriates weak man; and its abuse proves that the more equality there is established among men, the more virtue and happiness will reign in society.

Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.

Still the men stand up for the dignity of man, by oppressing the women.

But what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis!

The news media in general are liberal. If you want to be a reporter, you are going to see poverty and misery, and you have to be involved in the human condition.

I don’t think human beings are bad. They’re weak. And that’s what makes ’em bad.

We can master change not though force or fear, but only though the free work of an understanding mind, though an openness to new knowledge and fresh outlooks, which can only strengthen the most fragile and most powerful of human gifts: the gift of reason.

I always compare marriage to communism. They’re both institutions that don’t conform to human nature, so you’re going to end up with lying and hypocrisy.

Homophobia is like racism and anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry in that it seeks to dehumanize a large group of people, to deny their humanity, their dignity and personhood.

If conservatives get to call universal healthcare ‘socialized medicine,’ I get to call private, for-profit healthcare ‘soulless, vampire bastards making money off human pain.’

Inability, human incapacity, is the only boundary to an art.

But separate a man from his car – that’s inhuman.