It seems to me a fundamental dishonesty, and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it's useful and not because you think it's true.

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

No nation was ever so virtuous as each believes itself, and none was ever so wicked as each believes the other.

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.

The wise man thinks about his troubles only when there is some purpose in doing so; at other times he thinks about other things, or, if it is night, about nothing at all.

I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.

Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

A sense of duty is useful in work but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not to be endured with patient resignation.

Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.

It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.

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

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

I consider the official Catholic attitude on divorce, birth control, and censorship exceedingly dangerous to mankind.

We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach.

One of the most powerful of all our passions is the desire to be admired and respected.

Your writing is never as good as you hoped; but never as bad as you feared.

To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.

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 way to cause you to hate him of her.

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.

How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?

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.

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

Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?

It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go.

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.

When considering marriage one should ask oneself this question; 'will I be able to talk with this person into old age?' Everything else is transitory, the most time is spent in conversation.

The good life is inspired by love and guided by knowledge

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.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

It is essential to happiness that our way of living should spring from our own deep impulses and not from the accidental tastes and desires of those who happen to be our neighbors, or even our relations.

There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.

Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attibutable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.

Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness.

Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.

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.

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

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

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

The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

Sin is geographical.

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know

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

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

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

The secret of happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible, horrible, horrible.