 Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves. |
| Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness. |
| Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race. |
| To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy. |
| Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. |
| The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice. |
| 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. |
| Admiration of the proletariat, like that of dams, power stations, and aeroplanes, is part of the ideology of the machine age. |
| Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education. |
| 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. |
| The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it. |
| 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. |
| Boredom is... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it. |
| Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power. |
| 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. |
| Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure. |
| I do not pretend to start with precise questions. I do not think you can start with anything precise. You have to achieve such precision as you can, as you go along. |
| The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible. |
| To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom. |
| One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny. |
