"So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it."

"Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate."

"What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite."

"A process which led from the amoeba to man appeared to the philosophers to be obviously a progress though whether the amoeba would agree with this opinion is not known."

"It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this."

"Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts."

"Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change."

"A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing anxiety."

"When the qualities that now confer leadership have become universal, there will no longer be leaders and followers, and democracy will have been realized at last."

"A child develops best when, like a young plant, he is left undisturbed in the same soil. Too much travel, too much variety of impressions, are not good for the young, and cause them as they grow up to become incapable of enduring fruitful monotony."

"Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy."

"Work is of two kinds: first, altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter; second, telling other people to do so."

"Beggars do not envy millionaires though of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful."

"The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists, indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately."

"The belief that personality is mysterious and irreducible has no scientific warrant, and is accepted chiefly because it is flattering to our human self esteem."

"What Galileo and Newton were to the seventeenth century, Darwin was to the nineteenth."

"There was a footpath leading across fields to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics."

"What men want is not knowledge but certainty."

"When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That's if you want to teach them to think."

"The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt."

"Both in thought and in feeling, even though time be real, to realise the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom."

"A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live."

"Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons."

"Cynicism such as one finds very frequently among the most highly educated young men and women of the West results from the combination of comfort and powerlessness."

"The objection to propaganda is not only its appeal to unreason, but still more the unfair advantage which it gives to the rich and powerful."

"Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so."

"Aristotle could have avoided the mistake of thinking that women have fewer teeth than men, by the simple device of asking Mrs. Aristotle to keep her mouth open while he counted."

"The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour."

"Two things are to be remembered: that a man whose opinions and theories are worth studying may be presumed to have had some intelligence, but that no man is likely to have arrived at complete and final truth on any subject whatever. When an intelligent man expresses a view which seems to us obviously absurd, we should not attempt to prove that it is somehow true, but we should try to understand how it ever came toseemtrue. Thisexercise of historical and psychological imagination at once enlarges the scope of our thinking, and helps us to realize how foolish many of our own cherished prejudices will seem to an age which has a different temper of mind."

"It is a curious and painful fact that almost all the completely futile treatments that have been believed in during the long history of medical folly have been such as caused acute suffering to the patient. When anesthetics were discovered, pious people considered them an attempt to evade the will of God. It was pointed out, however, that when God extracted Adam's rib He put him into a deep sleep. This proved that anesthetics are all right for men; women, however, ought to suffer, because of the curse of Eve."

"The good life as I conceive it is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good."

"Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities."

"One must care about a world one will not see."

"The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper."

"It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living. It is clear also that thought is not free if all the arguments on one side of a controversy are perpetually presented as attractively as possible, while the arguments on the other side can only be discovered by diligent search."

"If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships."

"Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness."

"William James describes a man who got the experience from laughing-gas; whenever he was under its influence, he knew the secret of the universe, but when he came to, he had forgotten it. At last, with immense effort, he wrote down the secret before the vision had faded. When completely recovered, he rushed to see what he had written. It was: "A smell of petroleum prevails throughout."

"Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people's."

"To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead."

"The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf."

"Physics is mathematical not because we know so much about the physical world, but because we know so little; it is only its mathematical properties that we can discover."

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd."

"There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge."

"To be able to concentrate for a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement."

"None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear."

"There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less."

"I believe in using words, not fists. I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex."

"Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves."

"To be able to use leisure intelligently will be the last product of an intelligent civilization."