“It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence that could support this.”

The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.

Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.

Boredom is therefore a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it.

Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.

I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

No one ever gossips about the virtues of others.

Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise.

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.

The tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

Hurry no man’s cattle; you may come to own a donkey yourself.

If you are interested in preventing animal suffering, the first thing you should give up is eggs and milk, because the animals who produce those foods lead the most unhappy lives. You would do better to eat meat and stop eating eggs and dairy products.

The bird a nest, the spider a web, man friendship.

What an ugly beast is the ape, and how like us.

Be a good animal,true to your instincts.

There’s lots of good fish in the sea, maybe, but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you’re not mackerel or herring yourself, you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea.

Man is a rational animal. He can think up a reason for anything he wants to believe.