This illustrates an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences to which it gives rise.
The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection.
Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.
Philosophy is an unusually ingenious attempt to think fallaciously.
Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.
It is not my prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.
Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics.
There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
I consider the official Catholic attitude on divorce, birth control, and censorship exceedingly dangerous to mankind.
Morality in sexual relations, when it is free from superstition, consists essentially in respect for the other person, and unwillingness to use that person solely as a means of personal gratification, without regard to his or her desires.
I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive.
Politics is largely governed by sententious platitudes which are devoid of truth.
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.
No man is liberated from fear who dare not see his place in the world as it is; no man can achieve the greatness of which he is capable until he has allowed himself to see his own littleness.
A man is rational in proportion as his intelligence informs and controls his desires.
Speaking psycho-analytically, it may be laid down that any “great ideal” which people mention with awe is really an excuse for inflicting pain on their enemies. Good wine needs no bush, and good morals need no bated breath.
One of the most powerful of all our passions is the desire to be admired and respected.
Men have physical needs, and they have emotions. While physical needs are unsatisfied, they take first place; but when they are satisfied, emotions unconnected with them become important in deciding whether a man is to be happy or unhappy.
Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety.
Machines have altered our way of life, but not our instincts. Consequently, there is maladjustment.