Weak people revenge. Strong people forgive. Intelligent people ignore.

Appearances to the mind are of four kinds. Things either are what they appear to be; or they neither are, nor appear to be; or they are, and do not appear to be; or they are not, and yet appear to be. Rightly to aim in all these cases is the wise man’s task.

In walking, the will and the muscles are so accustomed to working together and performing their task with so little expenditure of force that the intellect is left comparatively free.

What a distressing contrast there is between the radiant intelligence of the child and the feeble mentality of the average adult.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.

To criticize is to appreciate, to appropriate, to take intellectual possession, to establish in fine a relation with the criticized thing and to make it one's own.

It doesn't matter how smart you are unless you stop and think.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children.

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

Fundamentally, there are only to ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion — the technique of the army and the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation — the technique of the marketplace.

What exactly is your 'fair share' of what 'someone else' has worked for?

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what they are going to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.

No matter how outrageous a lie may be, it will be accepted if stated loudly enough and often enough.

Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various “party lines.”

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow-beings.

Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.

Racism is not dead, but it is on life support—kept alive by politicians, race hustlers and people who get a sense of superiority by denouncing others as ‘racists’.