Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The sentiments of an adult are compounded of a kernel of instinct surrounded by a vast husk of education.
Human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those who seem least to demand it.
The mind is a strange machine which can combine the materials offered to it in the most astonishing ways.
Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.
All the time that he can spare from the adornment of his person, he devotes to the neglect of his duties.
Real life is, to most men, a long second best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.
The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.
I am allowed to use plain English because everybody knows that I could use mathematical logic if I chose.
Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth.
When people begin to philosophize they seem to think it necessary to make themselves artificially stupid.
One of the chief triumphs of modern mathematics consists in having discovered what mathematics really is.
Right conduct can never, except by some rare accident, be promoted by ignorance or hindered by knowledge.
The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth.
Neither the Church nor modern public opinion condemns petting, provided it stops short at a certain point.
Any philosophy worth taking seriously would have to be built upon a firm foundation of unyielding despair.
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.
Broadly speaking, we are in the middle of a race between human skill as a means and human folly as an end.
Religion may in most of its forms be defined as the belief that the gods are on the side of the government.
The sea, the stars, the night wind in waste places, mean more to me than even the human beings I love best.
While economics is about how people make choice, sociology is about how they don't have any choice to make.
I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.
Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
In all the creative work that I have done, what has come first is a problem, a puzzle involving discomfort.
It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit; divorced from it, they remain barren.
Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists - that is why they invented hell.
A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing anxiety.
Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.
The secrets to happiness include enterprise, exploration of one's interests and the overcoming of obstacles.
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
For a good notation has a subtlety and suggestiveness which at times make it seem almost like a live teacher.
The man who only loves beautiful things is dreaming, whereas the man who knows absolute beauty is wide awake.
Love as a relation between men and women was ruined by the desire to make sure of the legitimacy of children.
In spreading his ideas, Plato was willing to employ emotional appeals, state propaganda, and the use of force.
As soon as we abandon our own reason, and are content to rely upon authority, there is no end to our troubles.
Change is scientific; progress is ethical; change is indubitable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
I am myself a dissenter from all known religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die out.
Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it.
It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves great results.
All's well that ends well; which is the epitaph I should put on my tombstone if I were the last man left alive.
No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.
This is one of those views which are so absolutely absurd that only very learned men could possibly adopt them.
God and Satan alike are essentially human figures, the one a projection of ourselves, the other of our enemies.
Curious learning not only makes unpleasant things less unpleasant but also makes pleasant things more pleasant.
It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.
Ethical metaphysics is fundamentally an attempt, however disguised, to give legislative force to our own wishes.
I can only say that, while my own opinions as to ethics do not satisfy me, other people's satisfy me still less.
True happiness for human beings is possible only to those who develop their godlike potentialities to the utmost.