If people should ever start to do only what is necessary millions would die of hunger.

He who says he hates every kind of flattery, and says it in earnest, certainly does not yet know every kind of flattery.

Just as the performance of the vilest and most wicked deeds requires spirit and talent, so even the greatest demand a certain insensitivity which under other circumstances we would call stupidity.

The proof that the human being is the noblest of all creatures is that no other creature has ever denied it.

The most perfect ape cannot draw an ape; only man can do that; but, likewise, only man regards the ability to do this as a sign of superiority.

It is no great art to say something briefly when, like Tacitus, one has something to say; when one has nothing to say, however, and none the less writes a whole book and makes truth...

The American who first discovered Columbus made a bad discovery.

Most subjects at universities are taught for no other purpose than that they may be re-taught when the students become teachers.

With prophecies the commentator is often a more important man than the prophet.

The most dangerous untruths are truths slightly distorted.

What is called an acute knowledge of human nature is mostly nothing but the observer’s own weaknesses reflected back from others.

The great rule: If the little bit you have is nothing special in itself, at least find a way of saying it that is a little bit special.

If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.

We often have need of a profound philosophy to restore to our feelings their original state of innocence, to find our way out of the rubble of things alien to us, to begin to feel...

If all else fails, the character of a man can be recognized by nothing so surely as by a jest which he takes badly.

There exists a species of transcendental ventriloquism by means of which men can be made to believe that something said on earth comes from Heaven.

If we make a couple of discoveries here and there we need not believe things will go on like this for ever. Just as we hit water when we dig in the earth, so we...

If another Messiah was born he could hardly do so much good as the printing-press.

A schoolteacher or professor cannot educate individuals, he educates only species.

I believe that man is in the last resort so free a being that his right to be what he believes himself to be cannot be contested.

The most successful tempters and thus the most dangerous are the deluded deluders.

To receive applause for works which do not demand all our powers hinders our advance towards a perfecting of our spirit. It usually means that thereafter we stand still.

Be wary of passing the judgment: obscure. To find something obscure poses no difficulty: elephants and poodles find many things obscure.

There were honest people long before there were Christians and there are, God be praised, still honest people where there are no Christians. It could therefore easily be possible that people are Christians because true...

Here take back the stuff that I am, nature, knead it back into the dough of being, make of me a bush, a cloud, whatever you will, even a man, only no longer make me.

One is rarely an impulsive innovator after the age of sixty, but one can still be a very fine orderly and inventive thinker. One rarely procreates children at that age, but one is all the...

There is no more important rule of conduct in the world than this: attach yourself as much as you can to people who are abler than you and yet not so very different that you...

He swallowed a lot of wisdom, but all of it seems to have gone down the wrong way.

If you are going to build something in the air it is always better to build castles than houses of cards.

Theologians always try to turn the Bible into a book without common sense.

Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.

I am convinced we do not only love ourselves in others but hate ourselves in others too.

Man loves company, even if it is only that of a smoldering candle.

Good taste is either that which agrees with my taste or that which subjects itself to the rule of reason. From this we can see how useful it is to employ reason in seeking out...

Actual aristocracy cannot be abolished by any law: all the law can do is decree how it is to be imparted and who is to acquire it.

It is said that truth comes from the mouths of fools and children: I wish every good mind which feels an inclination for satire would reflect that the finest satirist always has something of both...

A book is a mirror: if an ape looks into it an apostle is hardly likely to look out.

Ideas too are a life and a world.

Some theories are good for nothing except to be argued about.

Man is a masterpiece of creation if for no other reason than that, all the weight of evidence for determinism notwithstanding, he believes he has free will.

To err is human also in so far as animals seldom or never err, or at least only the cleverest of them do so.

He who is enamored of himself will at least have the advantage of being inconvenienced by few rivals.

Delight at having understood a very abstract and obscure system leads most people to believe in the truth of what it demonstrates.

With most people disbelief in a thing is founded on a blind belief in some other thing.

One cannot demand of a scholar that he show himself a scholar everywhere in society, but the whole tenor of his behavior must none the less betray the thinker, he must always be instructive, his...

Doubt must be no more than vigilance, otherwise it can become dangerous.