Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts.
'Change' is scientific 'progress' is ethical change is indubitable whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.
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.
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 ignora...
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.
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.
Happiness, as is evident, depends partly upon external circumstances and partly upon oneself.
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. These passions, like great wi...
Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
There was once upon a time a census officer who had to record the names of all householders in a certain Welsh village. The first that he questioned was called William Williams; so were the second, th...
Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought is great and swift and free.
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.
How, in such an alien and inhuman world, can so powerless a creature as man preserve his aspirations untarnished? A strange mystery it is that nature, omnipotent but blind, in the revolutions of her s...
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already 3-parts dead.