Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
All that passes for knowledge can be arranged in a hierarchy of degrees of certainty, with arithmetic and the facts of perception at the top.
The atomists , unlike Socrates , Plato , and Aristotle , sought to explain the world without introducing the notion of purpose or final cause.
Science has made unrestricted national sovereignty incompatible with human survival. The only possibilities are now world government or death.
3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is a paradox; as is a paradox why the number 1 is not prime if it has no other divisors besides himself.
The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and start From the slightest pain or equal foe.
That the world is in a bad shape is undeniable, but there is not the faintest reason in history to suppose that Christianity offers a way out.
I resolved from the beginning of my quest that I would not be misled by sentiment and desire into beliefs for which there was no good evidence.
I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.
I went to Salt Lake City and the Mormons tried to convert me, but when I found they forbade tea and tobacco I thought it was no religion for me.
I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds.
To expect a personality to survive the disintegration of the brain is like expecting a cricket club to survive when all of its members are dead.
The first effect of emancipation from the Church was not to make men think rationally, but to open their minds to every sort of antique nonsense
Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.
When we perceive any object of a familiar kind, much of what appears subjectively to be immediately given is really derived from past experience.
The Stoic assures us that what is happening now will happen over and over again. [If so, Providende would] ultimately grow weary through despair.
We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach.
Fanaticism is the danger of the world, and always has been, and has done untold harm. I might almost say that I was fanatical against fanaticism.
Most political leaders acquire their position by causing large numbers of people to believe that these leaders are actuated by altruistic desires
Morally, a philosopher who uses his professional competence for anything except a disinterested search for truth is guilty of a kind of treachery.
The newspapers at one time said that I was dead but after carefully examining the evidence I came to the conclusion that this statement was false.
One of the troubles about vanity is that it grows with what it feeds on. The more you are talked about, the more you will wish to be talked about.
A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.
Clergymen almost necessarily fail in two ways as teachers of morals. They condemn acts which do no harm and they condone acts which do great harm.
If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full.
I did not know I loved you until I heard myself telling so, for one instance I thought, "Good God, what have I said?" and then I knew it was true.
For the learning of every virtue there is an appropriate discipline, and for the learning of suspended judgment the best discipline is philosophy.
We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.
It is permissible with certain precautions to speak in print of coitus, but it is not permissible to employ the monosyllabic synonym for this word.
Envy ... is one form of a vice, partly moral, partly intellectual, which consists in seeing things never in themselves but only in their relations.
When we have told how things behave when they are electrified, and under what circumstances they are electrified, we have told all there is to know
Humanistic ethics is based on the principle that only humans themselves can determine the criterion for virtue and not an authority transcending us.
Continuity of purpose is one of the most essential ingredients of happiness in the long run, and for most men that comes chiefly through their work.
Thomas Aquinas states parenthetically, as something entirely obvious, that men are more rational than women. For my part, I see no evidence of this.
Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.
Science, by itself, cannot supply us with an ethic. It can show us how to achieve a given end, and it may show us that some ends cannot be achieved.
Law in origin was merely a codification of the power of dominant groups, and did not aim at anything that to a modern man would appear to be justice
The human heart as modern civilization has made it is more prone to hatred than to friendship. And it is prone to hatred because it is dissatisfied.
The dictum that human nature cannot be changed is one of those tiresome platitudes that conceal from the ignorant the depths of their own ignorance.
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
A man's acts are partly determined by spontaneous impulse, partly by the conscious and unconscious effects of the various groups to which he belongs.
If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do.
Emphatic and reiterated assertion, especially during childhood, produces in most people a belief so firm as to have a hold even over the unconscious.
There is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. He does not, like the Platonic Socrates, set out to follow wherever the argument may lead.
It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know-or care-about circumstances in the colonies.
I believe four ingredients are necessary for happiness: health, warm personal relations, sufficient means to keep you from want, and successful work.
You may reasonably expect a man to walk a tightrope safely for ten minutes; it would be unreasonable to do so without accident for two hundred years.
Much of the most important evils that mankind have to consider are those which they inflict upon each other through stupidity or malevolence or both.
If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.
Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.
Reason may be a small force, but it is constant, and works always in one direction, while the forces of unreason destroy one another in futile strife.