“If we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.”

The method of learning by trial and error – of learning from our mistakes – seems to be fundamentally the same whether it is practiced by lower or by higher animals, by chimpanzees, or by men of science.

In philosophy methods are unimportant; any method is legitimate if it leads to results capable of being rationally discussed.

In so far as a scientific statement speaks about reality, it must be falsifiable: and in so far as it is not falsifiable, it does not speak about reality.

Theology, I still think, is due to a lack of faith.

Science may be described as the art of systematic oversimplification.

The game of science is, in principle, without end.

The essential feature of dualist-interactionism is that the mind and brain are independent entities and that they interact by quantum physics.

“It can’t happen here” is always wrong: a dictatorship can happen anywhere.

A theory that explains everything, explains nothing.

If our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men.

The simple truth is that truth is hard to come by, and that once found may easily be lost again.

The quest for precision is analogous to the quest for certainty, and both should be abandoned.

Every intellectual has a very special responsibility. He has the privilege and the opportunity of studying.

The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory but progress.

If you can’t say it simply and clearly, keep quiet, and keep working on it till you can.

“We don’t know anything” and believed that this was the most important philosophical truth.

Best not to know what’s waiting around the corner.

And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring passed out of all knowledge.

Life is like an ever-shifting kaleidoscope – a slight change, and all patterns alter.

Smooth and smiling faces everywhere, but ruin in their eyes.

It’s not what you preach, it’s what you tolerate.

It is awareness of both our shared pain and our longing for happiness that links us to other people and helps us to turn toward them with compassion.

Every word has consequences. Every silence, too.

We are never deceived; we deceive ourselves.