One should respect public opinion in so far as it is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person nation or creed.
Those who fear life are already three parts dead.
Mathematics takes us still further from what is human into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual world, but ever possible world, must conform.
It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so,it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that gaurds the door,and this dragon is religion
When a man tells you he knows the exact truth about anything, you are safe in inferring he is an inexact man.
Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
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.
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
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.
I do not believe that any peacock envies another peacock his tail because every peacock is persuaded that his own tail is the finest in the world. The consequence of this is that peacocks are peaceab...
For the young, there is nothing unattainable; a good thing desired with the whole force of a passionate will, and yet impossible, is to them not credible. Yet, by death, by illness, by poverty, or by...
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him.
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is very important.
If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships.
To be able to concentrate for a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement.
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.
Real life is to most men ... a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible.
There was a footpath leading across fields to New Southgate, and I used to go there alone to watch the sunset and contemplate suicide. I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more...