What we need is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out.

Capitalism

Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

Circumstance

If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

Death and Dying

Most people would rather die than think: many do.

Doubt

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.

Equality

In America everybody is of opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors.

Experience

In the revolt against idealism, the ambiguities of the word "experience" have been perceived, with the result that realists have more and more avoided the word.

Fathers

The fundamental defect with fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

Freedom

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

Happiness

The good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy; I mean that if you are happy you will be good.

The secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

Hatred

Hatred of enemies is easier and more intense than love of friends. But from men who are more anxious to injure opponents than to benefit the world at large no great good is to be expected.

Illusion

A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.

Knowledge

There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.

Life and Living

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

Patriotism

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Possibilities

Real life is, to most men, a long second-best, a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible; but the world of pure reason ;knows no compromise, no practical limitations, no barrier to the creative activity.

Reason

Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one.

Thoughts and Thinking

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth more than ruin more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

Time and Time Management

A truer image of the world, I think, is obtained by picturing things as entering into the stream of time from an eternal world outside, than from a view which regards time as the devouring tyrant of all that is.

Women

For my part I distrust all generalizations about women, favorable and unfavorable, masculine and feminine, ancient and modern; all alike, I should say, result from paucity of experience.