Philosophy

I know a better truth than yours. It is larger, roomier, more complex, and more authentic than any you will find in a single formulation or dictum or label or theory.

The hardest thing in the world is to see what is actually in front of you, unmediated by your own expectations, theories, and wishes about what should be there.

Success is somebody else's failure. Success is the American Dream we can keep dreaming because most people in most places, including thirty million of ourselves, live wide awake in the terrible reality of poverty.

This attitude of opposition is not justified as a strategy, as a means to an end, a way of changing the world. It is, rather, the best way of being in the world.

Silence is the soul's invisibility. We can, of course, conceal ourselves behind lies and sophistries, but when we speak, we are present, however careful our disguise.

The center of the self, itself, is this secret, obsessive, often silly, nearly continuous voice — the voice that is the surest sign we are alive.

To think for yourself — not narrowly, but rather as a mind — you must be able to talk to yourself: well, openly, and at length.

For peace is a process — a way of solving problems.

Remember that every government service, every offer of government-financed security, is paid for in the loss of personal freedom.

Character is always known. Thefts never enrich; alms never impoverish; murder will speak out of stone walls.

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.