There can't be a practical reason for believing something that is not true..

Gradually, ... the aspect of science as knowledge is being thrust into the background by the aspect of science as the power of manipulating nature. I….

Common sense, however it tries, cannot avoid being surprised from time to time..

Always remember that true happiness is not in getting what you want, but wanting what you already have. He who dies with the most toys is still dead.….

I feel as if one would only discover on one's death bed what one ought to have lived for.

Choose your parents wisely..

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 first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisu….

Man can be stimulated by hope or driven by fear, but the hope and the fear must be vivid and immediate if they are to be effective without producing ….

War...seems a mere madness, a collective insanity..

The more things a man is interested in, the more opportunities of happiness he has and the less he is at the mercy of fate, since if he loses one thi….

Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because t….

The harm that theology has done is not to create cruel impulses, but to give them the sanction of what professes to be lofty ethic, and to confer an ….

Tobacco . . . is not prohibited in the Scriptures, though, as Samuel Butler points out, St. Paul would no doubt have denounced it if he had known of ….

The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will ….

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses..

In a just world, there would be no possibility of 'charity'..

There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget ou….

I think it would be just to say the most essential characteristic of mind is memory, using this word in its broadest sense to include every influence….

If we were all given by magic the power to read each other’s thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be almost all friendships would be dissolved;….

The time has come, or is about to come, when only large-scale civil disobedience, which should be nonviolent, can save the populations from the unive….