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The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
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Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
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To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
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The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
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Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.
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Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.
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What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.
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There are two motives for reading a book: one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
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Too little liberty brings stagnation and too much brings chaos.
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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 that hostile.
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It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
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In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.
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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.
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The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
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The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
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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.
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The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists - that is why they invented hell.
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But all who are not lunitics are agreed about certain things: That it is better to be alive than dead, better to be adequately fed than starved, better to be free than to be a slave. Many people desire these things only for themselves and their friends; they are quite content that their enemies should suffer. These people can be refuted by science: Mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else. If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.
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Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
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This is patently absurd; but whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.
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If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence.
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Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.
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When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others. It is much more nearly certain that we are assembled here tonight than it is that this or that political party is in the right. Certainly there are degrees of certainty, and one should be very careful to emphasize that fact, because otherwise one is landed in an utter skepticism, and complete skepticism would, of course, be totally barren and completely useless.
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When one admits that nothing is certain one must, I think, also admit that some things are much more nearly certain than others.
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Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
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