Every state begins in compulsion; but the habits of obedience become the content of conscience, and soon every citizen thrills with loyalty to the flag. The citizen is right; for however the state begins, it soon becomes an indispensable prop to order.
India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings.
That a few simple men should in one generation have invented so powerful and appealing a personality, so lofty ethic, and so inspiring a vision of human brotherhood, would be a miracle far more incredible than any recorded in the Gospels.
So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him.
Never mind your happiness; do your duty.
In philosophy, as in politics, the longest distance between two points is a straight line.
It came to me that reform should begin at home, and since that day I have not had time to remake the world.
Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos.
If our economy of freedom fails to distribute wealth as ably as it has created it, the road to dictatorship will be open to any man who can persuasively promise security to all.
If man asks for many laws it is only because he is sure that his neighbor needs them; privately he is an unphilosophical anarchist, and thinks laws in his own case superfluous.
Inquiry is fatal to certainty.
When liberty becomes license, dictatorship is near.
Even when repressed, inequality grows; only the man who is below the average in economic ability desires equality; those who are conscious of superior ability desire freedom, and in the end superior ability has its way.
How much more suffering is caused by the thought of death than by death itself.
In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order.
Tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous.
Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement.
Civilization exists by geological consent, subject to change without notice.
It may be true that you can’t fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.
A cat has a reputation to protect. If it had a halo, it would be worn cocked to one side.