„Time makes more converts than reason.“

Quelle: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 363.

The Tragic Sense of Life (1913), V : The Rationalist Dissolution

Il est plus facile d'être amant que mari, par la raison qu'il est plus difficile d'avoir de l'esprit tous les jours que de dire de jolies choses de temps en temps.
Part I, Meditation V: Of the Predestined, aphorism LXIX.
Physiology of Marriage (1829)

Quelle: 2000s, Letter to a Christian Nation (2006), p. 51
Kontext: Atheism is not a philosophy - it is not even a view of the world. It is simply an admission of the obvious. In fact, "atheism" is a term that should not even exist. No one ever needs to identify himself as a "non-astrologer" or a "non-alchemist." We do not have words for people who doubt that Elvis is still alive or that aliens have traversed the galaxy only to molest ranchers and their cattle. Atheism is nothing more than the noises reasonable people make in the presence of unjustified religious beliefs.

No. 15.
Maxims and Moral Sentences

Quelle: Brevia: Short Essays and Aphorisms. (1871), p. 114

Quelle: Men Explain Things to Me

Quelle: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 411.

Anarchism: Its Philosophy and Ideal (1896)
Kontext: The masses have never believed in sophisms taught by economists, uttered more to confirm exploiters in their rights than to convert exploited! Peasants and workers, crushed by misery and finding no support in the well-to-do classes, have let things go, save from time to time when they have affirmed their rights by insurrection. And if workers ever thought that the day would come when personal appropriation of capital would profit all by turning it into a stock of wealth to be shared by all, this illusion is vanishing like so many others. The worker perceives that he has been disinherited, and that disinherited he will remain, unless he has recourse to strikes or revolts to tear from his masters the smallest part of riches built up by his own efforts; that is to say, in order to get that little, he already must impose on himself the pangs of hunger and face imprisonment, if not exposure to Imperial, Royal, or Republican fusillades.
But a greater evil of the present system becomes more and more marked; namely, that in a system based on private appropriation, all that is necessary to life and to production — land, housing, food and tools — having once passed into the hands of a few, the production of necessities that would give well-being to all is continually hampered. The worker feels vaguely that our present technical power could give abundance to all, but he also perceives how the capitalistic system and the State hinder the conquest of this well-being in every way.
Far from producing more than is needed to assure material riches, we do not produce enough.

As quoted in De Natura Deorum by Cicero, ii. 8.; iii. 9.

In the Puppet Theatre: Roof Gardens, Feathers and Human Sacrifice (p. 87)
The Soul of the Marionette: A Short Enquiry into Human Freedom (2015)

Christian Missions: A Triangular Debate, Before the Nineteenth Century Club of New York (1895)

Rex v. Inhabitants of Christchurch (1759), 2 Burr. Part IV. 949.

Quelle: Straight From The Heart (1985), Chapter Three, The Business Of politics, p. 67
Kontext: A successful politician must not only be able to read the mood of the public, he must have the skill to get the public on his side. The public is moved by mood more than logic, by instinct more than reason, and that is something that every politician must make use of or guard against

Quelle: Three to Get Deadly

Letter to Samuel Cooper (30 April 1776) http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2093
Kontext: We cannot make Events. Our Business is wisely to improve them. There has been much to do to confirm doubting Friends & fortify the Timid. It requires time to bring honest Men to think & determine alike even in important Matters. Mankind are governed more by their feelings than by reason.

The Spirit of Revolt (1880)
Kontext: Whoever has a slight knowledge of history and a fairly clear head knows perfectly well from the beginning that theoretical propaganda for revolution will necessarily express itself in action long before the theoreticians have decided that the moment to act has come. Nevertheless, the cautious theoreticians are angry at these madmen, they excommunicate them, they anathematize them. But the madmen win sympathy, the mass of the people secretly applaud their courage, and they find imitators. In proportion as the pioneers go to fill the jails and the penal colonies, others continue their work; acts of illegal protest, of revolt, of vengeance, multiply.
Indifference from this point on is impossible. Those who at the beginning never so much as asked what the "madmen" wanted, are compelled to think about them, to discuss their ideas, to take sides for or against. By actions which compel general attention, the new idea seeps into people's minds and wins converts. One such act may, in a few days, make more propaganda than thousands of pamphlets.
Above all, it awakens the spirit of revolt: it breeds daring. The old order, supported by the police, the magistrates, the gendarmes and the soldiers, appeared unshakable, like the old fortress of the Bastille, which also appeared impregnable to the eyes of the unarmed people gathered beneath its high walls equipped with loaded cannon. But soon it became apparent that the established order has not the force one had supposed.

Quelle: Letter to a Christian Nation