So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.
— Benjamin Franklin, American Founding Father, inventor and statesman (1706-1790), from his Autobiography
The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who remain neutral in time of great moral crisis.
— Dante Alighieri, Italian poet (1265-1321), from the Divine Comedy
Indifference is the essence of inhumanity.
— George Bernard Shaw, Anglo-Irish dramatist and wit (1856-1950)
Man's basic vice, the source of all his evils, is the act of unfocusing his mind, the suspension of his consciousness, which is not blindness, but the refusal to see, not ignorance, but the refusal to know.''
— Ayn Rand, Russian/American author and philosopher (1905-1982)
The greatest of faults, I should say, is to be conscious of none.
— Thomas Carlyle, Scots-English historian and author (1795-1881)
Few men think, yet all will have opinions.
— George Berkeley, Irish bishop and empirical philosopher (1685-1753)
Most of ones life. . . is one prolonged effort to prevent oneself thinking.
— Aldous Huxley, English novelist (1894-1963)
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
— Upton Sinclair, American author and politician (1878-1968)
Necessity is an interpretation, not a fact.
— Friedrich Nietzsche, German philosopher (1844-1900)