“So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.”

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.

If human beings were shown what they’re really like, they’d either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

Ignore death up to the last moment; then, when it can’t be ignored any longer, have yourself squirted full of morphia and shuffle off in a coma. Thoroughly sensible, humane and scientific, eh?

Through the sacred art of pausing, we develop the capacity to stop hiding, to stop running away from our experience. We begin to trust in our natural intelligence, in our naturally wise heart, in our capacity to open to whatever arises.

Stillness, insight, and wisdom arise only when we can settle into being complete in this moment, without having to seek or hold on to or reject anything.

First thing every morning before you arise say out loud, ‘I believe,’ three times.

All the things that truly matter, beauty, love, creativity, joy and inner peace arise from beyond the mind.

Pleasure is always derived from something outside you, whereas joy arises from within.

Pride is pleasure arising from a man’s thinking too highly of himself.

Experience has shown, and a true philosophy will always show, that a vast, perhaps the larger, portion of truth arises from the seemingly irrelevant.

We know that from time to time, there arise among human beings, people who seem to exude love as naturally as the sun gives out heat.