“A man is like a fraction whose numerator is what he is and whose denominator is what he thinks of himself. The larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction.”

Chapters: 67. Three Treasures

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“All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”

Chapters: 39. Oneness

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“Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them.”

Chapters: 81. Journey Without Goal

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“If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.”

Chapters: 38. Fruit Over Flowers

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“it's much better to do good in a way that no one knows anything about it.”

Chapters: 70. Inscrutable

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“We can know only that we know nothing. And that is the highest degree of human wisdom.”

Chapters: 67. Three Treasures

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“‘if you knew you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do today?’ The begrimed-with-sweat farmer answered, ‘I would plow.’”

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“In historic events, the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself…. every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history”

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“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

from Anna Karenina

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“A political party has never accomplished anything for humanity. Individuals and geniuses have been the pioneers of every reform and of progress.”

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“The real law lives in our hearts. If our hearts are empty, no law or political reform can fill them.”

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“Buddha, Moses, Plato, Socrates, Schopenhauer are to me the real sovereigns.”

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“We have only one instrument wherewith to know ourselves and our relation to the universe—we have no other—and that instrument is reason.”

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“One of the most remarkable men not only of England and of our generation, but of all countries and times.”

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“The biggest surprise in life is old age”

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“Everyone thinks about changing the world, but few think about changing themselves.”

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“Anti-Semitism is a pathological condition, a peculiar form of sexual perversion... Among all disgraceful phenomena, it is the most disgusting and abominable.”

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“Money is a new form of slavery, and distinguishable from the old simply by the fact that it is impersonal—that there is no human relation between master and slave.”

from What Is to Be Done? (1889)

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“by whatever name men may all murder—murder always remains murder and a criminal and shameful thing... we must stop seeing as something else what we call now service of country, heroism of war, military glory, and patriotism. We must learn to see these as they really are—the naked, criminal business of murder”

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“I believe Christ was a man like ourselves; to look upon him as God would seem to me the greatest of sacrileges.”

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“The supposed right of landed property now lies at the foundation not only of economic misery, but also of political disorder and—above all—the moral deprivation of the people.”

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“Laws are the product of selfishness, deception, and party prejudice. Trust justice is not in them and cannot be in them.”

from The Kingdom of God is Within You (1893)

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“Without hypocrisy, lying, punishments, prisons, fortresses and murders, no new power can arise and no existing one hold its own... thus efforts to get it are not likely to be coupled with goodness, but with the opposite qualities of pride, craft and cruelty.”

from The Kingdom of God is Within You (1893)

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“Governments are not only unnecessary, but are harmful and most highly immoral institutions, in which a self-respecting, honest man cannot and must not take part... As soon as a majority of people cease to do this, the fraud which enslaves people will be abolished. Only in this way can people be freed from slavery.”

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“Shakespeare is not only no genius but is not even 'an average author'... his words have nothing in common with art and poetry.”

from Shakespeare and the Drama (1903)

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“What if my whole life has all been wrong?... I was going up in public opinion, but to the same extent life was ebbing away from me”

from The Death of Ivan Ilyich

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“What is the Jew?...What kind of unique creature is this whom all the rulers of all the nations of the world have disgraced and crushed and expelled and destroyed; persecuted, burned and drowned, and who, despite their anger and their fury, continues to live and to flourish... The Jew - is the symbol of eternity. ... He is the one who for so long had guarded the prophetic message and transmitted it to all mankind. A people such as this can never disappear. The Jew is eternal. He is the embodiment of eternity.”

from The Final Resolution

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“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

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“It's amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.”

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“most men—including those at ease with problems of the greatest complexity—can seldom accept even the simplest and most obvious truth if it be such as would oblige them to admit the falsity of conclusions which they have delighted in explaining to colleagues, which they have proudly taught to others, and which they have woven, thread by thread, into the fabric of their lives.”

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“But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.”

from Anna Karenina

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“Some, like Tolstoy, found this in the outlook of simple people, unspoiled by civilization; like Rousseau, he wished to believe that the moral universe of peasants was not unlike that of children, not distorted by the conventions and institution of civilization, which sprang from human vices”

— Isaiah Berlin 1909 – 1997 CE
"the world's greatest talker"
from The Proper Study of Mankind

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“Tolstoy was the least superficial of men... At once insanely proud and filled with self-hatred, omniscient and doubting everything, cold and violently passionate, contemptuous and self-abasing, tormented and detached, surrounded by an adoring family, by devoted followers, by the admiration of the entire civilized world, and yet almost wholly isolated, he is the most tragic of the great writers”

— Isaiah Berlin 1909 – 1997 CE
"the world's greatest talker"
from The Proper Study of Mankind

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