“No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.”

It seems to me fundamental dishonesty, and a fundamental treachery to intellectual integrity to hold a belief because you think it’s useful and not because you think it’s true.

The fundamental concept in social science is power, in the same sense in which energy is the fundamental concept in physics.

To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present, very few people have reached this level.

Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness.

There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.

How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?

The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already 3 parts dead.

It’s easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.

I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive.

Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of great fear.

Your writing is never as good as you hoped, but never as bad as you feared.

Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.

One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision.

Aristotle maintained that women have fewer teeth than men; although he was twice married, it never occurred to him to verify this statement by examining his wives’ mouths.

Some people worry. Others prepare.

I take time to open up with people. But once I know you, I’m fine. I’m a shy person.

War brings out the worst and the best in people. Wars do not make men great, but they do bring out the greatness in good men.

For each illness that doctors cure with medicine, they provoke ten in healthy people by inoculating them with the virus that is a thousand times more powerful than any microbe: the idea that one is ill.

People who refuse to open their minds to new strategies seldom become rich.

When it comes to racism, you hear people say, “I don’t care if people are white, black, purple or green.” Hold on, now, purple or green? Come on now, you gotta draw the line somewhere.

An intelligent person hires people who are more intelligent than he is.

Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.