To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.
It is likely that America will be more important during the next century or two, but after that it may well be the turn of China.
You must believe that you can help bring about a better world.
Drunkeness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness.
What the world needs is not dogma but an attitude of scientific inquiry combined with a belief that the torture of millions is not desirable, whether inflicted by Stalin or by a Deity imagined in the likeness of the believer.
All human activity is prompted by desire.
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
Our beliefs are, however, often contrary to fact.
Another merit of home is that it preserves the diversity between individuals. If we were all alike, it might be convenient for the bureaucrat and the statistician, but it would be very dull, and would lead to a very unprogressive society.
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
Is there any knowledge in the world which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?
Science may set limits to knowledge, but should not set limits to imagination.
Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.
The most valuable things in life are not measured in monetary terms. The really important things are not houses and lands, stocks and bonds, automobiles and real state, but friendships, trust, confidence, empathy, mercy, love and faith.
Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.