Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.

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.

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

With the introduction of agriculture mankind entered upon a long period of meanness, misery, and madness, from which they are only now being freed by the beneficent operation of the machine.

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

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

Anything you‘re good at contributes to happiness.

Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

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.

The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life, which is impossible to the pure egoist.

No great achievement is possible without persistent work.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

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.

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.

Indignation is a submission of our thoughts, but not of our desires.

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

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.

The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.

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

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.

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

Many people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.

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

To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.

The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.

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.

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.

If any philosopher had been asked for a definition of infinity, he might have produced some unintelligible rigmarole, but he would certainly not have been able to give a definition that had any meaning at all.

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

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

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.

The demand for certainty is one which is natural to man, but is nevertheless an intellectual vice.

The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.

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

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

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

To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future.

A smile happens in a flash, but its memory can last a lifetime.

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.

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.

Drunkenness is temporary suicide.

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.

Sin is geographical.

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.

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.

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.

I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza‘s God, it won‘t love us in return.

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

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

Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.

A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.

Truth is a shining goddess, always veiled, always distant, never wholly approachable, but worthy of all the devotion of which the human spirit is capable.

No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.

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

There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths.

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

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

Boredom is… a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

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

The pleasure of work is open to anyone who can develop some specialised skill, provided that he can get satisfaction from the exercise of his skill without demanding universal applause.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.

No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful?

In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

Much that passes as idealism is disguised hatred or disguised love of power.

Right discipline consists, not in external compulsion, but in the habits of mind which lead spontaneously to desirable rather than undesirable activities.

Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world, where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable, and praised when they are not praiseworthy.

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

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.

To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy.

All movements go too far.

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.

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

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.

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.

Those who forget good and evil and seek only to know the facts are more likely to achieve good than those who view the world through the distorting medium of their own desires.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

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

Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.

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.

Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.

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.

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.

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Love should be a tree whose roots are deep in the earth, but whose branches extend into heaven.

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

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.

The coward wretch whose hand and heart Can bear to torture aught below, Is ever first to quail and start From the slightest pain or equal foe.

To teach how to live without certainty and yet without being paralysed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can do for those who study it.

The key to happiness is accepting one unpleasant reality every day.