It is pure illusion to think that an opinion that passes down from century to century, from generation to generation, may not be entirely false.
There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.
We don't love qualities; we love a person; sometimes by reason of their defects as well as their qualities.
Weak minds exaggerate too much the wrong done to the Africans.
The easiest way to be cheated is to believe yourself to be more cunning than others.
Men, who are rogues individually, are in the mass very honorable people.
There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought.
Testimony should be a philosophical problem and not limited to legal or historical contexts where it refers to the account of a witness who reports what he has seen.
Short of genius a rich man cannot even imagine poverty.
Not to be loved is a misfortune, but it is an insult to be loved no longer.
The true science and study of man is man.
I have read descriptions of Paradise that would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there.
But constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go.
Liberty is the right of doing whatever the laws permit.
I have always observed that to succeed in the world one should seem a fool, but be wise.
Our Prophet was a radical too- he fought against the injustices of his community and challenged the feudal order of his society, so they called him a radical. So what? We should be proud of that!
The text is a limited field of possible constructions.
Because Islam in its original form was tough and hard, not weak and pliable.
Prayer holds together the shattered fragments of the creation. It makes history possible.
You have to study a great deal to know a little.
God, if there is a God, take my soul, if I have a soul.
Power ought to serve as a check to power.
In this connection, faith and experience teach us many truths by means of the short-cut of authority and by the proofs of very pleasant and agreeable feelings.
In bodies moved, the motion is received, increased, diminished, or lost, according to the relations of the quantity of matter and velocity; each diversity is uniformity, each change is constancy.
The deterioration of a government begins almost always by the decay of its principles.
What must be the nature of the world... if human beings are able to introduce changes into it?
Society is the union of men and not the men themselves.
There is only one thing that can form a bond between men, and that is gratitude... we cannot give someone else greater power over us than we have ourselves.
Although born in a prosperous realm, we did not believe that its boundaries should limit our knowledge, and that the lore of the East should alone enlighten us.
Oil wealth has been a curse on us, made us weak and docile.
How can sincerity be a condition of friendship? A taste for truth at any cost is a passion which spares nothing.
What honour have we got left, when nobody is listening to us?
The Law is one aspect of a much more concrete and encompassing relation than the relation between commanding and obeying that characterizes the imperative.
Why should we use the Dollar even when we trade among ourselves?
No man is so perfect, so necessary to his friends, as to give them no cause to miss him less.
A slave has but one master; an ambitious man has as many masters as there are people who may be useful in bettering his position.
If a victory is told in detail, one can no longer distinguish it from a defeat.
It is a kind of spiritual snobbery that makes people think they can be happy without money.
When the legislative and executive powers are united in the same person, or in the same body of magistrates, there can be no liberty; because apprehensions may arise, lest the same monarch or senate should enact tyrannical laws, to execute them in a tyrannical manner.
Life has no meaning the moment you loose the illusion of being eternal.
God is related to the universe, as Creator and Preserver; the laws by which He created all things are those by which He preserves them.
God has linked together all His works, though He has not on that account produced in them entities charged with the function of union.
Life was given to me as a favor, so I may abandon it when it is one no longer.
Look at my own case: I am the father in my family. It is my duty to enforce the Shariah in my family and I do so with an iron hand.
Man, as a physical being, is like other bodies governed by invariable laws.
Thus the creation, which seems an arbitrary act, supposes laws as invariable as those of the fatality of the Atheists. It would be absurd to say that the Creator might govern the world without those rules, since without them it could not subsist.
As soon as there is language, generality has entered the scen.
The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed.
Raillery is a mode of speaking in favor of one's wit at the expense of one's better nature.
They who assert that a blind fatality produced the various effects we behold in this world talk very absurdly; for can anything be more unreasonable than to pretend that a blind fatality could be productive of intelligent beings?
In certain situations, there is a classical function and responsibility there that must not be avoided, even if it is just to appeal to good sense.
Indonesians must understand that there is no Islamic state without the enforcement of Islamic laws. Otherwise it is just talk and nothing else.
If I knew of something that could serve my nation but would ruin another, I would not propose it to my prince, for I am first a man and only then a Frenchman... because I am necessarily a man, and only accidentally am I French.
I derive nothing whatever from my own nature, nothing from the nature imagined by the philosophers - all comes from God and His decrees.
I believe it is always a writer who is accused of being someone who is engaged in an explanation with language, the economy of language.
The giving is the hardest part; what does it cost to add a smile?
You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.
You know what charm is: a way of getting the answer 'yes' without having asked any clear question.
Every revolutionary ends by becoming either an oppressor or a heretic.
I shall tell you a great secret, my friend. Do not wait for the last judgment, it takes place every day.
Abstract Art: A product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered.
If there is sin against life, it consists... in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.