Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.
HELL: A place where the police are German, the motorists French and the cooks English.
Thinking you know when in fact you don't is a fatal mistake, to which we are all prone
One of the most powerful of all our passions is the desire to be admired and respected.
Human life, its growth, its hopes, fears, loves, et cetera, are the result of accidents
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.
A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.
What we cannot think we cannot think, therefore we also cannot say what we cannot think.
I feel as if one would only discover on one's death bed what one ought to have lived for
None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error.
There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere.
Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.
Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say as little as the physicist means to say.
To be able to concentrate for a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement.
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
The wise use of leisure, it must be conceded, is a product of civilization and education.
Human nature being what it is, people will insist upon getting some pleasure out of life.
Be isolated, be ignored, be attacked, be in doubt, be frightened, but do not be silenced.
There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire - poison and antidote.
It is in our hearts that evil lies, and it is from our hearts that it must be plucked out.
Shakespeare . . . If he does not give you delight, you had better ignore him [if you can].
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.
The problem with the wise is they are so filled with doubts while the dull are so certain.
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin, more even than death.
I often long to . . . give up my life to love of my neighbour. This is really a temptation.
What vanity needs for its satisfaction is glory, and it's easy to have glory without power.
To create a healthy philosophy you should renounce metaphysics but be a good mathematician.
Science is no substitute for virtue; the heart is as necessary for a good life as the head.
Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.
To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.
Africans had to be taught that nudity is wicked; this was done very cheaply by missionaries.
My sad conviction is that people can only agree about what they're not really interested in.
One is always a little afraid of love, but above all, one is afraid of pain or causing pain.
The pure mathematician, like the musician, is a free creator of his world of ordered beauty.
The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.
Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely.
Herd pressure is to be judged by two things: first, its intensity, and second, its direction.
Happiness, as is evident, depends partly upon external circumstances and partly upon oneself.
What has human happiness to do with morals? The object of morals is not to make people happy.
Ideas and principles that do harm are as a rule, though not always, cloaks for evil passions.
Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery, and in such a world hopes could only be irrational.
Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?
What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.
When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us.
Neither acquiescence in skepticism nor acquiescence in dogma is what education should produce.
The average man's opinions are much less foolish than they would be if he thought for himself.
I dislike Communism because it is undemocratic, and capitalism because it favors exploitation.
I FIND IT SO DIFFICULT NOT TO HATE, WHEN I DO NOT HATE I FEEL WE FEW ARE SO LONELY IN THE WORLD