“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

It’s a little embarrassing that after 45 years of research & study, the best advice I can give people is to be a little kinder to each other.

To be a fool at the right time is also an art.

All war propaganda consists, in the last resort, in substituting diabolical abstractions for human beings. Similarly, those who defend war have invented a pleasant sounding vocabulary of abstractions in which to describe the process of mass murder.

Every ceiling reached becomes a floor.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.

The greater part of the population is not very intelligent, dreads responsibility, and desires nothing better than to be told what to do. Provided the rulers do not interfere with its material comforts and its cherished beliefs, it is perfectly happy to let itself be ruled.

He accepts his boredom, when it comes, not merely philosophically, but almost with pleasure.

Words can be like X-rays if you use them properly — they’ll go through anything. You read and you’re pierced.

The question of the next generation will not be one of how to liberate the masses, but rather, how to make them love their servitude.

People often ask me what is the most effective technique for transforming their life. It is a little embarrassing that after years and years of research and experimentation, I have to say that the best answer is – just be a little kinder.

One believes things because one has been conditioned to believe them.

If you don’t gamble, you’ll never win.

The pleasures of ignorance are as great, in their way, as the pleasures of knowledge.

Liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of central government.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you mad.

Reality cannot be ignored except at a price; and the longer the ignorance is persisted in, the higher and more terrible becomes the price that must be paid.

The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love.

If we climb high enough, we will reach a height from which tragedy ceases to look tragic.

the conch exploded into a thousand white fragments and ceased to exist.

The measure of woman’s distaste for any part of her life lies not in the loudness of her lamentations (these are only an attempt to buy a martyr’s crown at a reduced price) but in her persistent pursuit of that occupation of which she never ceases to complain.

Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. We will one day understand what causes it, and then cease to call it divine. And so it is with everything in the universe.

When the saint ceases to seek after holiness, purity, righteousness, truth; when he ceases to pray, stops reading the Word and gives way to carnal appetites, then it is that Satan comes.

The moment a man falls into sin, divine life ceases to flow, and his life becomes one of helplessness.

Cut away all that is excessive, straighten all that is crooked, bring light to all that is overcast, labour to make all one glow of beauty and never cease chiselling your statue.