Those who can be made to believe absurdities can be made to commit atrocities.

Man is a mental being, and to know this is the first step on the road to freedom, for as long as you believe yourself to be primarily physical, you will remain in bondage, that is to say, to your own habits of thought, for there is no other bondage.

When the intensity of emotional conviction subsides, a man who is in the habit of reasoning will search for logical grounds in favor of the belief which he finds in himself.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

Every man gives his life for what he believes. Every woman gives her life for what she believes. Sometimes people believe in little or nothing, nevertheless they give up their lives to that little or nothing. One life is all we have, and we live it as we believe in living it, and then it’s gone. But to surrender what you are, and live without belief - that’s more terrible than dying—more terrible than dying young.

If I believe in God and life after death and you do not, and if there is no God, we both lose when we die. However, if there is a God, you still lose and I gain everything.

Do not hide your faith and your beliefs under a bushel basket, especially in this world that seems to have gone mad with political correctness.

Consensus: the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values, and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner: 'I stand for consensus?

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.

Some people believe holding on and hanging in there are signs of great strength. However, there are times when it takes much more strength to know when to let go and then do it.

What is not good for the swarm is not good for the bee.

We demand that big business give the people a square deal; in return we must insist that when anyone engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right he shall be given a square deal.

Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.

If the soul is left in darkness sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most impressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be saturated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

If a businessman makes a mistake, he suffers the consequences. If a bureaucrat makes a mistake, you suffer the consequences.

Loyalty to country always. Loyalty to government, when it deserves it.

The higher you soar the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.

Diversity of opinion within the framework of loyalty to our free society is not only basic to a university but to the entire nation.

History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.

Understanding a question is half an answer.

You are today where your thoughts have brought you; you will be tomorrow where your thoughts take you.

I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to the other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

The man who has anticipated the coming of troubles takes away their power when they arrive.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.