Science does not aim at establishing immutable truths and eternal dogmas; its aim is to approach the truth by successive approximations, without claiming that at any stage final and complete accuracy has been achieved.
In the part of this universe that we know there is great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying.
A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing anxiety.
The painter has to unlearn the habit of thinking that things seem to have the color which common sense says they ‘really’ have, and to learn the habit of seeing things as they appear.
A stupid man’s report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.
When considering marriage one should ask oneself this question; ‘will I be able to talk with this person into old age?’ Everything else is transitory, the most time is spent in conversation.
Your writing is never as good as you hoped; but never as bad as you feared.
How much longer is the world willing to endure this spectacle of wanton cruelty?
One must care about a world one will not see.
The opinions that are held with passion are always those for which no good ground exists; indeed the passion is the measure of the holders lack of rational conviction. Opinions in politics and religion are almost always held passionately.
I found one day in school a boy of medium size ill-treating a smaller boy. I expostulated, but he replied: “The bigs hit me, so I hit the babies; that’s fair.” In these words he epitomized the history of the human race.
To like many people spontaneously and without effort is perhaps the greatest of all sources of personal happiness.
Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.
Never try to discourage thinking, for you are sure to succeed.
Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile.
What is new in our time is the increased power of the authorities to enforce their prejudices.
Brief and powerless is man’s life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.
For love of domination we must substitute equality; for love of victory we must substitute justice; for brutality we must substitute intelligence; for competition we must substitute cooperation. We must learn to think of the human race as one family.
Any pleasure that does no harm to other people is to be valued.
I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are untrue.