ALBERT PIKE

The universal medicine for the Soul is the Supreme Reason and Absolute Justice; for the mind, mathematical and practical Truth; for the body, the Quintessence, a combination of light and gold.

Philosophy is a kind of journey, ever learning yet never arriving at the ideal perfection of truth.

A war for a great principle ennobles a nation.

Will is the dynamic soul-force.

Doubt, the essential preliminary of all improvement and discovery, must accompany the stages of man's onward progress. The faculty of doubting and questioning, without which those of comparison and judgment would be useless, is itself a divine prerogative of the reason.

One man is equivalent to all Creation. One man is a World in miniature.

We have all the light we need, we just need to put it in practice.

To work with the hands or brain, according to our requirements and our capacities, to do that which lies before us to do, is more honorable than rank and title.

Faith begins where Reason sinks exhausted.

What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.

Almost all the noblest things that have been achieved in the world, have been achieved by poor men; poor scholars, poor professional men, poor artisans and artists, poor philosophers, poets, and men of genius.

The eyes of the cheerful and of the melancholy man are fixed upon the same creation; but very different are the aspects which it bears to them.

War is a series of catastrophes which result in victory.

The sovereignty of one's self over one's self is called Liberty.

Above all things let us never forget that mankind constitutes one great brotherhood; all born to encounter suffering and sorrow, and therefore bound to sympathize with each other.

A man should live with his superiors as he does with his fire: not too near, lest he burn; nor too far off, lest he freeze.

Be not discouraged and remember, above all things, that you can have nothing to expect from the enemy [the Union]. They will have no mercy on you, for they are more merciless than wolves, and more rapacious.

Two forms of government are favorable to the prevalence of falsehood and deceit. Under a Despotism, men are false, treacherous, and deceitful through fear, like slaves dreading the lash. Under a Democracy they are so as a means of attaining popularity and office, and because of the greed for wealth.

We do not see and estimate the relative importance of objects so easily and clearly from the level or the waving land as from the elevation of a lone peak, towering above the plain; for each looks through his own mist.

The Word of God is the universal and invisible Light, cognizable by the senses, that emits its blaze in the Sun, Moon, Planets, and other Stars.

Let us drink together, fellows, as we did in days of yore. And still enjoy the golden hours that Fortune has in store; The absent friends remembered be, in all that’s sung or said, And Love immortal consecrate the memory of the dead.

It is most true, that Truth is a Divine attribute and the foundation of every virtue. To be true, and to seek to find and learn the Truth, are the great objects of every good Mason.

Man's real genius and knowledge remains preserved in books

There are greater and better things in us all, than the world takes account of, or than we take note of; if we would but find them out.

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.