To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
No people anywhere in the world would accept being expelled en masse from their own country; how can anyone require the people of Palestine to accept a punishment which nobody else would tolerate?
Aristotle, in spite of his reputation, is full of absurdities. He says that children should be conceived in the Winter, when the wind is in the North, and that if people marry too young the children will be female. He tells us that the blood of females is blacker than that of males; that the pig is the only animal liable to measles; that an elephant suffering from insomnia should have its shoulders rubbed with salt, olive-oil, and warm water; that women have fewer teeth than men, and so on. Nevertheless, he is considered by the great majority of philosophers a paragon of wisdom.
We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.
One of the most interesting and harmful delusions to which men and nations can be subjected is that of imagining themselves special instruments of the Divine Will.
All human activity is prompted by desire.
If we spent half an hour every day in silent immobility, I am convinced that we should conduct all our affairs, personal, national, and international, far more sanely than we do at present.
Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts.
A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.
It is essential to happiness that our way of living should spring from our own deep impulses and not from the accidental tastes and desires of those who happen to be our neighbors, or even our relations.
It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go.
Grasshopper always wrong in argument with chicken.
One is always a little afraid of love, but above all, one is afraid of pain or causing pain.
Bolshevism is to be reckoned with Mohammedanism rather than with Christianity and Buddhism. Christianity and Buddhism are primarily personal religions, with mystical doctrines and a love of contemplation. Mohammedanism and Bolshevism are practical, social, unspiritual, concerned to win the empire of the world.
To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future.
I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.
No rules, however wise, are a substitute for affection and tact.
HELL: A place where the police are German, the motorists French and the cooks English.
None of our beliefs are quite true; all have at least a penumbra of vagueness and error.
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature has made them.
The problem with the wise is they are so filled with doubts while the dull are so certain.
That the world is in a bad shape is undeniable, but there is not the faintest reason in history to suppose that Christianity offers a way out.
Whenever one finds oneself inclined to bitterness, it is a sign of emotional failure.
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
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