The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself.

Politics is largely governed by sententious platitudes which are devoid of truth

Righteousness cannot be born until self-righteousness is dead.

Truth is for the gods; from our human point of view, it is an ideal, towards which we can approximate, but which we cannot hope to reach.

Real life is, to most men, a long second best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.

To abandon the struggle for private happiness, to expel all eagerness of temporary desire, to burn with passion for eternal things-this is emancipation, and this is the free man's worship... United with his fellow men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love.

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.