💬 Quotes

"There is in each of us a stream of tendency, whether you choose to call it philosophy or not, which gives coherence and direction to thought and action."

"Stare decisis is at least the everyday rule of our judicial business. We should not lightly upset settled precedents unless there is reason to be certain that the mischiefous consequences of the error outweigh the benefit of certainty."

"Logic and history and custom have their place. We will shape the law to conform to them when we can; but outward and inward forces are constantly at work, and pressure is applied where the law is cramped and narrow."

"The universe endures. The more we study the nature of time, the more we shall comprehend that duration means invention, the creation of forms, the continuous elaboration of the absolutely new."

"Life is a current passing from germ to germ through the medium of a developed organism... It is as if a broad current of life had dashed itself against obstacles, and had been split into a multiplicity of streams."

"Intellect is characterized by a natural inability to comprehend life. Alien to the very movement of life, the intellect plies its trade by means of rigid concepts, treating the living as dead."

"Instinct is sympathy. If this sympathy could expand its object and also reflect upon itself, it would give us the key to the inner operations of life."

"To act, we are forced to perceive a series of events as separate states, discrete moments, and static objects, carving up the continuous flow of reality to suit our practical needs."

"In reality, the past is preserved by itself, automatically. In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant... our past is whole, complete, and absolute, pressing forward against our present."

"Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do."

"An action then may be said to be conformable to then principle of utility... when the tendency it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any it has to diminish it."

"Prejudice apart, the game of push-pin is of equal value with the arts and sciences of music and poetry, if the game of push-pin furnishes more pleasure."

"The community is a fictitious body, composed of the individual persons who are considered as constituting as it were its members. The interest of the community then is, what? — the sum of the interests of the several members who compose it."

"A measure of government... may be said to be conformable to or dictated by the principle of utility, when in like manner the tendency which it has to augment the happiness of the community is greater than any which it has to diminish it."

"The greatest happiness of the greatest number is the foundation of morals and legislation."

"Behold, I have come to thee, I have brought to thee righteousness, I have rid myself of sin."

"My heart is mine for eternity. May my heart be with me in the place of hearts."

"I am yesterday, today, and tomorrow, and I have the power to be born a second time."

"Hail to thee, Lord of Truth, who dost know right from wrong, and before whom I now stand pure."

"I fly up as the hawk, I cackle as the goose; I swoop down upon the divine domain like a falcon of the sky."