Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.
Exhortations to obstruct the operations of Government in detail, should; Exhortations to resist all.
Whenever the powers of government are placed in any hands other than those of the community, whether those of one man, of a few, or of several, those principles of human nature which imply that government is at all necessary, imply that those persons will make use of them to defeat the very end for which government exists.
The government and the people are under a moral necessity of acting together; a free press compels them to bend to one another.
Every man should be considered as having a right to the character which he deserves; that is, to be spoken of according to his actions.
If nature had produced spontaneously all the objects which we desire, and in sufficient abundance for the desires of all, there would have been no source of dispute or of injury among men; nor would any man have possessed the means of ever acquiring authority over another.
It cannot be precisely known how any thing is good or bad, till it is precisely known what it is.
To return to my own trees, I went among them often, acknowledging their presence with a touch of my hand against their trunks.
Without approval and without scorn, but carefully studying the sentences word by word, one should trace them in the Discourses and verify them by the Discipline. If they are neither traceable in the Discourses nor verifiable by the Discipline, one must conclude thus: 'Certainly, this is not the Blessed One's utterance; this has been misunderstood by that bhikkhu - or by that community, or by those elders, or by that elder. ' In that way, bhikkhus, you should reject it.
The conflict between art and politics. . . cannot and must not be solved.
Whenever people are being intellectually dishonest in debate, it is an implicit concession they have lost the fight