People seem good while they are oppressed, but they only wish to become oppressors in their turn: life is nothing but a competition to be the crimina….

Animal rights, taken to their logical conclusion, mean votes for oysters..

Science seems to be at war with itself.... Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive rea….

The doctrine (of) maintaining that the language of daily life, with words used in their ordinary meanings, suffices for philosophy . . . I find mysel….

But if thought is to become the possession of many, not the privilege of the few, we must have done with fear. It is fear that holds men back - fear ….

Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation. It has nothing to do with the relation of the soul to God, or with m….

Moreover, the attitude that one ought to believe such and such a proposition, independently of the question whether there is evidence in its favor, i….

I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my garden….

Collective wisdom, alas, is no adequate substitute for the intelligence of individuals. Individuals who opposed received opinions have been the sourc….

The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth..

Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines..

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones..

The happiness that is genuinely satisfying is accompanied by the fullest exercise of our faculties and the fullest realization of the world in which ….

The white tails of rabbits, according to some theologians, have a purpose, namely to make it easier for sportsmen to shoot them..

Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth..

Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it..

In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted..

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..

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure..

To the primitive mind, everything is either friendly or hostile; but experience has shown that friendliness and hostility are not the conceptions by ….

Socrates was the chief saint of the Stoics throughout their history ; his attitude at the time of his trial, his refusal to escape, his calmness in t….