“One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one’s work is terribly important.”

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.

There is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at all. The idea that things must have a beginning is really due to the poverty of our thoughts.

So far as I can remember there is not one word in the gospels in praise of intelligence.

Conventional people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard such departure as a criticism of themselves.

I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.

It is the preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.

Love is wise, hatred is foolish.

What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.

To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.

Politics is largely governed by sententious platitudes which are devoid of truth.

Love can flourish only as long as it is free and spontaneous; it tends to be killed by the thought of duty. To say that it is your duty to love so-and-so is the surest way to cause you to hate him of her.

A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.

Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.

None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error.

I believe that the time has arrived for medical investigation of the problems of manned rocket flight, for it will not be the engineering problems but rather the limits of the human frame that will make the final decision as to whether manned space flight will eventually become a reality.

An immense percentage of snobs, I believe, is to be found in every rank of this mortal life.

Believe and be confirmed.

Believe me when I say that I will find endless ways to make sure you know what a prize you are.

The pace of discovery is going unbelievably fast.

The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that my father didn’t believe in God, and so he had no hang-ups about souls.

I believe that there is a greater power in the world than the evil power of military force, of nuclear bombs — there is the power of good, of morality, of humanitarianism.

She always wanted to believe in things.