Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
Fundamental happiness depends more than anything else upon what may be called a friendly interest in persons and things.
This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the second chance were offered me.
It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.
The atomic bomb embodies the results of a combination genius and patience as remarkable as any in the history of mankind.
Physics, owing to the simplicity of its subject matter, has reached a higher state of development than any other science.
Those who advocate common usage in philosophy sometimes speak in a manner that suggests the mystique of the 'common man.'
In any closet, you can find it, if it is too small, or out of style, or there is just one of it where there should be two
The teaching of Christ, as it appears in the Gospels, has had extraordinarily little to do with the ethics of Christians.
Heretical views arise when the truth is uncertain, and it is only when the truth is uncertain that censorship is invoked.
Mankind is divided into two classes: those who, being artificial, praise nature, and those who, being natural, praise art.
Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that is happiness.
Public opinion is always more tyrannical towards those who obviously fear it than towards those who feel indifferent to it.
No Carthaginian denied Moloch, because to do so would have required more courage that was required to face death in battle.
Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics.
There is no difference between someone who eats too little and sees Heaven and someone who drinks too much and sees snakes.
More important than the curriculum is the question of the methods of teaching and the spirit in which the teaching is given
The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.
Frege has the merit of ... finding a third assertion by recognising the world of logic which is neither mental nor physical.
The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.
We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.
As for earthquakes, though they were still formidable, they were so interesting that men of science could hardly regret them.
Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
It was the duty of wives to submit to husbands, not of husbands to submit to wives. . . men have stronger muscles than women.
Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.
One of the most painful circumstances of recent advances in science is that each one makes us know less than we thought we did
If one lived for ever the joys of life would inevitably in the end lose their savour. As it is, they remain perennially fresh.
When I was a child . . . Only virtue was prized, virtue at the expense of intellect, health, happiness, and every mundane good.
Suppose atomic bombs had reduced the population of the world to one brother and sister; should they let the human race die out?
Mathematics is, I believe, the chief source of the belief in eternal and exact truth, as well as a sensible intelligible world.
This, however, is a passing nightmare; in time the earth will become again incapable of supporting life, and peace will return.
There seems scarcely any limit to what could be done in the way of producing a good world, if only men would use science wisely.
The white tails of rabbits, according to some theologians, have a purpose, namely to make it easier for sportsmen to shoot them.
Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety.
For over two thousand years it has been the custom among earnest moralists to decry happiness as something degraded and unworthy
When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others.
It is likely that America will be more important during the next century or two, but after that it may well be the turn of China.
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
If everything has a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just be the world as God.
A man of Seville is shaved by the Barber of Seville if and only if the man does not shave himself. Does the barber shave himself?
If the State does not acquire supremacy over [vast private] enterprises, it becomes their puppet, and they become the real State.
Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
The satisfaction to be derived from success in a great constructive enterprise is one of the most massive that life has to offer.
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
Christ . . . said that a man who had looked after a woman lustfully had sinned as much as the man who had seduced her. How absurd!