“Our lives are universally shortened by our ignorance.”

People are beginning to see that the first requisite to success in life is to be a good animal.

Marriage: a ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and through the nose of the gentleman.

The preservation of health is a duty. Few seem conscious that there is such a thing as physical morality.

Marriage: A word which should be pronounced ‘mirage’.

Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained; most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources.

The wise man must remember that while he is a descendant of the past, he is a parent of the future.

Who indeed, after pulling off the coloured glasses of prejudice and thrusting out of sight his pet projects, can help seeing the folly of these endeavours to protect men against themselves? A sad population of imbeciles would our schemers fill the world with, could their plans last.

An argument fatal to the communist theory, is suggested by the fact, that a desire for property is one of the elements of our nature.

Music must take rank as the highest of the fine arts – as the one which, more than any other, ministers to the human spirit.

Education has for its object the formation of character.

Old forms of government finally grow so oppressive that they must be thrown off even at the risk of reigns of terror.

Divine right of kings means the divine right of anyone who can get uppermost.

Every cause produces more than one effect.

A living thing is distinguished from a dead thing by the multiplicity of the changes at any moment taking place in it.

All socialism involves slavery.

A jury is composed of twelve men of average ignorance.

The best lessons a man ever learns are from his mistakes. It is not for want of schoolmasters that we are still ignorant.

We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.

Politics in a literary work, is like a gun shot in the middle of a concert, something vulgar, and however, something which is impossible to ignore.

I do not consider it an insult, but rather a compliment to be called an agnostic. I do not pretend to know where many ignorant men are sure – that is all that agnosticism means.

Science is the most reliable guide for civilization, for life, for success in the world. Searching a guide other than the science is meaning carelessness, ignorance and heresy.

Forming grammatically correct sentences is for the normal individual the prerequisite for any submission to social laws. No one is supposed to be ignorant of grammaticality; those who are belong in special institutions. The unity of language is fundamentally political.

What dies in awakening is not you, but ignorance.

We must eliminate the gulf of mistrust and ignorance that keeps us from learning from each other.