Each religion necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself. Religions, like languages, are necessary rivals. What religion a man shall have is a historical accident, quite as much as what language he shall speak.
Wisdom lies in taking everything with good humor and a grain of salt.
Knowledge of what is possible is the beginning of happiness.
Happiness is the only sanction of life; where happiness fails, existence remains a mad and lamentable experiment.
The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the older man who will not laugh is a fool.
Man is a gregarious animal, and much more so in his mind than in his body. He may like to go alone for a walk, but he hates to stand alone in his opinions.
Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand.
There is wisdom in turning as often as possible from the familiar to the unfamiliar: it keeps the mind nimble, it kills prejudice, and it fosters humor.
Advertising is the modern substitute for argument; its function is to make the worse appear the better.
History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten. ...What is interesting is brought forward as if it had been central and efficacious in the march of events, and harmonies are turned into causes. Kings and generals are endowed with motives appropriate to what the historian values in their actions; plans are imputed to them prophetic of their actual achievements, while the thoughts that really preoccupied them remain buried in absolute oblivion.
The mediocrity of everything in the great world of today is simply appalling. We live in intellectual slums.
The mass of mankind is divided into two classes, the Sancho Panza's who have a sense for reality, but no ideals, and the Don Quixote's with a sense for ideals, but mad.
The aim of life is some way of living, as flexible and gentle as human nature; so that ambition may stoop to kindness, and philosophy to condor and humor. Neither prosperity nor empire nor heaven can be worth winning at the price of a virulent temper, bloody hands, an anguished spirit, and a vain hatred of the rest of the world.
The Bible is a wonderful source of inspiration for those who don't understand it.
Depression is rage spread thin.
Christianity persecuted, tortured, and burned. Like a hound it tracked the very scent of heresy. It kindled wars, and nursed furious hatreds and ambitions... Man, far from being freed from his natural passions, was plunged into artificial ones quite as violent and much more disappointing.
An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.
The aim of education is the condition of suspended judgment on everything.
Fashion is something barbarous, for it produces innovation without reason and imitation without benefit.
The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.
Do not have evil-doers for friends, do not have low people for friends: have virtuous people for friends, have for friends the best of men.
Real unselfishness consists in sharing the interests of others.
It is true that I am carrying out various methods of treatment recommended by doctors and dentists in the hope of dying in the remote future in perfect health.
Most men's conscience, habits, and opinions are borrowed from convention and gather continually comforting assurances from the same social consensus that originally suggested them.
History is always written wrong, and so always needs to be rewritten.
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