“Truth is found neither in the thesis nor the antithesis, but in an emergent synthesis which reconciles the two.”

Wickedness also resides in the gaze that perceives itself as innocent and surrounded by wickedness.

Education is the art of making man ethical.

When we look at the world rationally, the world looks rationally back.

The spirit is never at rest but always engaged in ever progressive motion, in giving itself a new form.

When liberty is mentioned, we must always be careful to observe whether it is not really the assertion of private interests which is thereby designated.

To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.

The important question of how poverty can be remedied is one which agitates and torments modern societies especially.

Propounding peace and love without practical or institutional engagement is delusion, not virtue.

Art is the sensuous presentation of ideas.

The one who merely flees is not yet free. In fleeing he is still conditioned by that from which he flees.

It is easier to discover a deficiency in individuals, in states, and in Providence, than to see their real import and value.

Every consciousness pursues the death of the other.

America is therefore the land of the future, where, in the ages that lie before us, the burden of the World’s History shall reveal itself.

What experience and history teaches us is that people and governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.

Art does not simply reveal God: it is one of the ways in which God reveals, and thus actualizes, himself.

Too fair to worship, too divine to love.

It is not the germs we need worry about. It is our inner terrain.

A bottle of wine contains more philosophy than all the books in the world.

Life is dominated by asymmetrical actions.

A bit of science distances one from God, but much science nears one to Him.

I asked god, “why do we sin?” God replied, “The roses in the garden smell delightfully, but in your vase, they rot, just like people in conditions that don’t belong to them.”

The function of prayer is not to influence God, but rather to change the nature of the one who prays.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

I never knew anyone, that examined and deliberated about nonsense, who did not believe it before the end of his enquiries.