“Sons have always a rebellious wish to be disillusioned by that which charmed their fathers.”

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.

By thinking primarily of evil we tend, however excellent our intentions, to create occasions for evil to manifest itself.

Every man’s memory is his private literature.

The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.

Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying.

Human beings act in a great variety of irrational ways, but all of them seem to be capable, if given a fair chance, of making a reasonable choice in the light of available evidence. Democratic institutions can be made to work only if all concerned do their best to impart knowledge and to encourage rationality.

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that’s your own self.

Good is a product of the ethical and spiritual artistry of individuals; it cannot be mass-produced.

Which is better – to be born stupid into an intelligent society or intelligent into an insane one?

In all activities of life, the secret of efficiency lies in an ability to combine two seemingly incompatible states: a state of maximum activity and a state of maximum relaxation.

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which mean never losing your enthusiasm.

Armaments, universal debt and planned obsolescence – those are the three pillars of Western prosperity.

The world is an illusion, but an illusion which we must take seriously.

The most valuable of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it has to be done, whether you like it or not.

In regard to propaganda the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or the propaganda might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies.

Riches cannot rescue from the grave, which claims alike the monarch and the slave.

Many people can rightfully claim, as much as anyone can rightfully claim anything, that much of their lives have been spent stumbling through a cloud of cluelessness.

Riches do not constitute any claim to distinction. It is only the vulgar who admire riches as riches.

I will not allow the light to blind me, not when even the darkness couldn’t claim me.

Claiming certainty without corroborating evidence is stupid.

I resolved to claim for my sex all that an impartial Creator had bestowed, which, by custom and a perverted application of the Scriptures, had been wrested from woman.

We, we live! ours are the hours, and the living have their claims.

How you look is your statement, because it’s a claiming of yourself.