A.R. Von Quotes

The most beautiful, perhaps the only true philosophical song existing in any known tongue ....perhaps the deepest and loftiest thing the world has to show.

The really unhappy person is the one who leaves undone what they can do, and starts doing what they don't understand; no wonder they come to grief.

Petroleum is the product of a distillation from great depth and issues from the primitive rocks beneath which the forces of all volcanic action lie.

An old fool is the worst of all fools.

By the time any view becomes a majority view, it is no longer the best view: somebody will already have advanced beyond the point which the majority have reached.

The ant is a collectively intelligent and individually stupid animal; man is the opposite.

Public works are not accomplished by the miraculous power of a magic wand. They are paid for by funds taken away from the citizens.

Faust, the Ninth Symphony, and the will of Adolf Hitler are eternal youth and know neither time nor transience.

There is no western, capitalistic country in which the conditions of the masses have not improved in an unprecedented way.

The common man is the sovereign consumer whose buying or abstention from buying ultimately determines what should be produced and in what quantity and quality.

For a strolling damsel a doubtful reputation bears.

Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind.

Something that cannot be explained cannot be seen.

To grow mature is to separate more distinctly, to connect more closely.

Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable — the art of the next best

Whoever prefers the material comforts of life over intellectual wealth is like the owner of a palace who moves into the servants’ quarters and leaves the sumptuous rooms empty.

Who are you then?" "I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.

We can be wise from goodness and good from wisdom.

Character develops itself in the stream of life.

To know someone here or there with whom you can feel there is understanding in spite of distances or thoughts expressed That can make life a garden.

Observation is like a piece of glass, which, as a mirror, must be very smooth, and must be very carefully polished, in order that it may reflect the image pure and undistorted.

The artist expresses only what he has within himself, not what he sees with his eyes

Our foibles are really what make us lovable.

We decline the claim to power by parties which want to own their followers body and soul, and which want to put themselves over and above the whole nation.

And who will deny that a world in which the wealthy are powerful is still a better world than one in which only the already powerful can acquire wealth?

To accept good advice is but to increase one's own ability.

What is a loophole? If the law does not punish a definite action or does not tax a definite thing, this is not a loophole. It is simply the law.

The person who in shaky times also wavers only increases the evil, but the person of firm decision fashions the universe.

Laws are like sausages. You sleep far better the less you know about how they are made.

What government is the best? That which teaches us to govern ourselves. [Ger., Welche Regierung die beste sei? Diejenige die uns lehrt uns selbst zu regieren.]

The most important thing to remember is that inflation is not an act of God, that inflation is not a catastrophe of the elements or a disease that comes like the plague. Inflation is a policy.

Progress is only possible by passing from a state of undifferentiated wholeness to differentiation of parts.

There are some things which cannot be learned, though they can be studied. Among them are the laws of art—and the lawlessness of it, as well.

A person places themselves on a level with the ones they praise.

"People's minds are trained largely at the expense of their hearts." This is not so; it is only that there are more educable minds than there are educable hearts.

Nature goes her own way, and all that to us seems an exception is really according to order.

The ultimate decision about what is accepted as right and wrong will be made not by individual human wisdom but by the disappearance of the groups that have adhered to the "wrong" beliefs.

What pays under capitalism is satisfying the common man, the customer. The more people you satisfy, the better for you.

Strange how blind people are! They are horrified by the torture chambers of the Middle Ages, but their arsenals fill them with pride!

We must raise and train an army of fighters for freedom.

Continued inflation inevitably leads to catastrophe.

The poor man wishes to conceal his poverty, and the rich man his wealth: the former fears lest he be despised, the latter lest he be plundered.

It is inherent in the nature of the capitalistic economy that, in the final analysis, the employment of the factors of production is aimed only toward serving the wishes of consumers.

I like gardening. I'm really a nature man. I spend as much time as I can in nature. I feel really safe there.

Few men have imagination enough for reality.

If children grew up according to early indications, we should have nothing but geniuses.

The question that motivates my research is, if we can put a man on the Moon with 100,000 [people], what can we do with 100 million?

Big business always serve - directly or indirectly - the masses.

The greatest happiness for the thinking person is to have explored the explorable and to venerate in equanimity that which cannotbe explored.

There is no point in developing anything at the cost of exploiting and abusing animals.