20 quotes
It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
If human nature were unchangeable, as ignorant people still suppose it to be, the situation would indeed be hopeless.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
The people who are regarded as moral luminaries are those who forego ordinary pleasures themselves and find compensation in interfering with the pleasures of others.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
Americans need rest, but do not know it. I believe this to be a large part of the explanation of the crime wave in the United States.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
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.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
It is obvious that "obscenity" is not a term capable of exact legal definition; in the practice of the Courts, it means "anything that shocks the magistrate."
Sceptical Essays (1928)
We have, in fact, two kinds of morality side by side; one which we preach but do not practise, and another which we practise but seldom preach.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
A European who goes to New York and Chicago sees the future... when he goes to Asia he sees the past.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
"patriotism," i.e., a willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
The State is a collection of officials, different for difference purposes, drawing comfortable incomes so long as the status quo is preserved. The only alteration they are likely to desire in the status quo is an increase of bureaucracy and the power of bureaucrats.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
[Patriotism is the] willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
I wish to propose for the reader's favourable consideration a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
William James used to preach the "will-to-believe." For my part, I should wish to preach the "will-to-doubt." None of our beliefs are quite true; all at least have a penumbra of vagueness and error. What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
Sceptical Essays (1928)
Man is essentially a dreamer, wakened sometimes for a moment by some peculiarly obtrusive element in the outer world, but lapsing again quickly into the happy somnolence of imagination. Freud has shown how largely our dreams at night are the pictured fulfilment of our wishes; he has, with an equal measure of truth, said the same of day-dreams; and he might have included the day-dreams which we call beliefs.
Sceptical Essays (1928)