“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.

There seems to be no good reason why a thoroughly scientific dictatorship should ever be overthrown.

The survival of democracy depends on the ability of large numbers of people to make realistic choices in the light of adequate information.

The worst enemy of life, freedom and the common decencies is total anarchy; their second worst enemy is total efficiency.

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.

No social stability without individual stability.

At this point we find ourselves confronted by a very disquieting question: Do we really wish to act upon our knowledge?

Experience is not what happens to you; it’s what you do with what happens to you.

Beware of being too rational. In the country of the insane, the integrated man doesn’t become king. He gets lynched.

All that is needed is money and a candidate who can be coached to look sincere. Political principles and plans for specific action have come to lose most of their importance. The personality of the candidate, the way he is projected by the advertising experts, are the things that really matter.

So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly arise and make them miserable.

Single-mindedness is all very well in cows or baboons; in an animal claiming to belong to the same species as Shakespeare, it is simply disgraceful.

People intoxicate themselves with work so they won’t see how they really are.

To travel is to discover that everyone is wrong about other countries.

Love casts out fear; but conversely fear casts out love. And not only love. Fear also casts out intelligence, casts out goodness, casts out all thought of beauty and truth.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

Love may forgive all infirmities and love still in spite of them: but Love cannot cease to will their removal.

To cease to think creatively is to cease to live.

When we blindly adopt a religion, a political system, a literary dogma, we become automatons. We cease to grow.

For dear me, why abandon a belief Merely because it ceases to be true.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.

Wisdom ceases to be wisdom when it becomes too proud to weep, too grave to laugh, and too selfish to seek other than itself.

Anything may happen when womanhood has ceased to be a protected occupation.