Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.

We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.

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...

Government can easily exist without laws, but law cannot exist without government.

I have been merely oppressed by the weariness and tedium and vanity of things lately: nothing stirs me, nothing seems worth doing or worth having done: the only thing that I strongly feel worth while...

It is evident as a matter of logic that, since they (world religions) disagree, not more than one of them can be true.

In the Second World War he took no public part, having escaped to a neutral country just before its outbreak. In private conversation he was wont to say that homicidal lunatics were well employed in...

Liberation from the tyranny of the body contributes to greatness, but just as much to greatness in sin as to greatness in virtue.

In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson...

Having knowledge of an unethical act and allowing it to continue can spread a contagion that can affect multiple beings in society

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

The life of Man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long....

For the young, there is nothing unattainable; a good thing desired with the whole force of a passionate will, and yet impossible, is to them not credible. Yet, by death, by illness, by poverty, or...

Nothing can penetrate the loneliness of the human heart except the highest intensity of the sort of love the religious teachers have preached.

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

These illustrations suggest four general maxims[…]. The first is: remember that your motives are not always as altruistic as they seem to yourself. The second is: don’t over-estimate your own merits. The third is: don’t...

The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.

A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

I have lived in the pursuit of a vision, both personal and social. Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful, for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give...

I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: “The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that’s fair.” In these words he...

The only kind of appeal that wins any instinctive response in party politics is an appeal to hostile feeling; the men who perceive the need of cooperation are powerless. Until education has been directed for...

You may kill an artist or a thinker, but you cannot acquire his art or his thought.

It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

Intellectually, what is stimulating to a young man is a problem of obvious practical importance. A young man learning economics, for example, ought to hear lectures from individualists and socialists, protectionists and free-traders, inflationists and...

In Labor movements generally, success through violence can hardly be expected except in circumstances where success without violence is attainable.

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of...

And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence

The world is full of injustice, and those who profit by injustice are in a position to administer rewards and punishments. The rewards go to those who invent ingenious justifications for inequality, the punishments to...

Consideremos la larga historia de las actividades inspiradas por el fervor moral: los sacrificios humanos, las persecuciones de herejes, las cazas de brujas, los pogroms, hasta que se llega al exterminio en gran escala por...

Boredom is essentially a thwarted desire for events, not necessarily pleasant ones, but just occurrences such as will enable the victim of ennui to know one day from another. The opposite of boredom, in a...

There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal as a human being to human beings; remember...

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth — more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable...

Education should aim at destroying free will so thatpupils thus schooled, will be incapable throughoutthe rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwisethan as their schoolmasters would have wished. . . .Influences of the...

Over a billion people believe in Allah without truly knowing what Allah supposedly stands for or what he really demands of them. And the minority that do understand continue to be Moslems because they have...

Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought of duty. To say that it is your duty to love so-and-so is the surest...

Not only teachers, but all commonplace persons in authority,desire in their subordinates that kind of uniformitywhich makes their actions easily predictable and never inconvenient.The result is that they crush initiative and individualitywhen they can, and...

All who are not lunatics are agreed about certain things. That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than a slave. Many people...

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

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

Pure mathematics consists entirely of assertions to the effect that, if such and such a proposition is true of anything, then such and such another proposition is true of that thing. It is essential not...

As a philosopher, if I were speaking to a purely philosophic audience I should say that I ought to describe myself as an Agnostic, because I do not think that there is a conclusive argument...

Science can teach us, and I think our hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supporters, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own...

The habit of considering a man’s religious, moral and political opinions before appointing him to a post or giving him a job is the modern form of persecution.

El obispo pasa a argüir que ‘el universo ha sido hecho y está gobernado por un propósito inteligente’ y que sería una falta de inteligencia el haber hecho al hombre para que pereciera. Hay muchas...

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling? The reason is clearly that the human heart as modern civilisation has made it...

All that alcohol does for them is to liberate the sense of sin, which reason suppresses in saner moments.