There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.

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.

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

Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.

Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

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.

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 onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

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

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

Extreme hopes are born from extreme misery.

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

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives' mouths.

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 gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.

Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one.

Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

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.

In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word experience have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

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.

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

Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age.

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

Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.

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

The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

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

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

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

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

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

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.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.

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

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.