Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.
A life without adventure is likely to be unsatisfying, but a life in which adventure is allowed to take whatever form it will is sure to be short.
It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
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.
Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people’s happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.
Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?
In all affairs it’s a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.
A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
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.
Drunkenness is temporary suicide.
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
No one gossips about other people’s secret virtues.
Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.
Italy, and the spring and first love all together should suffice to make the gloomiest person happy.
What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite.
I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.