424 quotes
I shall keep it [the manuscript] by me until the end of May for purposes of revision, and of adding malicious foot-notes.
Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
When I come to my own beliefs, I find myself quite unable to discern any purpose in the universe, and still more unable to wish to discern one.
Is There a God? (1952)
Change is one thing, progress is another.
Unpopular Essays (1950)
The camera is as subjective as we are.
An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics (1927)
Envy is the basis of democracy.
The Conquest of Happiness (1930)
The tendency of our perceptions is to emphasise increasingly the objective elements in an impression, unless we have some special reason, as artists have, for doing the opposite.
An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics (1927)
I like mathematics because it is not human and has nothing particular to do with this planet or with the whole accidental universe – because, like Spinoza's God, it won't love us in return.
Historical facts, many of them, have an intrinsic value, a profound interest on their own account, which makes them worthy of study, quite apart from any possibility of linking them together by means of causal laws.
On History (1904)
A European who goes to New York and Chicago sees the future... when he goes to Asia he sees the past.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
If men were actuated by self-interest, which they are not – except in the case of a few saints – the whole human race would cooperate.
What Desires Are Politically Important? (1950)
It is entirely clear that there is only one way in which great wars can be permanently prevented, and that is the establishment of an international government with a monopoly of serious armed force.
The conception of the necessary unit of all that is resolves itself into the poverty of the imagination, and a freer logic emancipates us from the straitwaistcoated benevolent institution which idealism palms off as the totality of being.
Our Knowledge of the External World (1914)
A world full of happiness is not beyond human power to create; the obstacles imposed by inanimate nature are not insuperable. The real obstacles lie in the heart of man, and the cure for these is a firm hope, informed and fortified by thought.
Proposed Roads To Freedom (1918)
A logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible, since these serve much the same purpose as is served by experiments in physical science.
The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.
The Study of Mathematics (1907)
Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.
A Free Man's Worship (1903)
Marriage is for women the commonest mode of livelihood, and the total amount of undesired sex endured by women is probably greater in marriage than in prostitution.
Marriage and Morals (1929)
The life of man is a long march through the night, surrounded by invisible foes, tortured by weariness and pain, towards a goal that few can hope to reach, and where none may tarry long.
A Free Man's Worship (1903)
Our words tend to conceal what is private and particular in our impressions, and to make us believe that different people live in a common world to a greater extent than is in fact the case.
An Outline of Philosophy Ch.15 The Nature of our Knowledge of Physics (1927)