The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.

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Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

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The most valuable things in life are not measured in monetary terms. The really important things are not houses and lands, stocks and bonds, automobiles and real state, but friendships, trust, confidence, empathy, mercy, love and faith.

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If we spent half an hour every day in silent immobility, I am convinced that we should conduct all our affairs, personal, national, and international, far more sanely than we do at present.

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When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.

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Every great idea starts out as a blasphemy.

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The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

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We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.

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No rules, however wise, are a substitute for affection and tact.

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Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.

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