Great Throughts Treasury

"There is… no point in deliberately flouting public opinion; this is still to be under its domination, though in a topsy-turvy way. But to be genuinely indifferent to it is both a strength and a source of happiness."

"Thought is free when it is exposed to free competition among beliefs, i.e., when all beliefs are able to state their case, and no legal or pecuniary advantages or disadvantages attach to beliefs."

"The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggest that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours."

"A stupid man's report of what a clever man says is never accurate because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand."

"Anything you're good at contributes to happiness."

"Change is one thing, progress is another. "Change" is scientific, "progress" is ethical; change is indisputable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy."

"To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level."

"To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead."

"To be without some part of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness."

"True happiness for human beings is possible only to those who develop their godlike potentialities to the utmost."

"We have… two kinds of morality side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice but seldom preach."

"When men willingly follow a leader, they do so with a view to the acquisition of power by the group which he commands, and they feel that his triumphs are theirs."

"What passes as “human nature” is at most one-tenth nature, the other nine-tenths being nurture."

"Continuity of purpose is one of the most essential ingredients of happiness in the long run, and for most men this comes chiefly through their work."

"I believe that love of truth is the basis of all real virtue..."

"I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious.""

"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it's still a foolish thing."

"If you think your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based upon faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting or distorting the minds of the young in what is called 'education.'"

"Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one."

"If an international system could be established which would remove the fear of war, the improvement in everyday mentality of everyday people would be enormous and very rapid. Fear, at present, overshadows the world."

"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."

"If we were all given by magic the power to read each other's thoughts, I suppose the first effect would be to dissolve all friendships."

"It is the preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly."

"Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education."

"Of all the forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness."

"Nothing is so exhausting as indecision, and nothing is so futile."

"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth: more than ruin, more even than death."

"Many people would rather die than think; in fact, most do."

"The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible."

"Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false."

"Of course not. After all, I may be wrong. [when asked whether he would be prepared to die for his beliefs]"

"Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy."

"The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces, the more astonishing becomes what human beings have achieved."

"The fundamental defect of fathers is that they want their children to be a credit to them."

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts."

"Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man."

"There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them and feel justified in lying to them."

"To fear love is to fear life; and those who fear life are already three-parts dead."

"To realize the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom."

"To teach how to live with uncertainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy in our age can still do for those who study it."

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt."

"We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power."

"A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy can live."

"A man who is to educate really well, and is to make the young grow and develop into their full stature, must be filled through and through with the spirit of reverence. It is reverence towards others that is lacking in those who advocate machine-made cast-iron systems. "

""Free thought" means thinking freely... To be worthy of the name [freethinker] he must be free of two things: the force of tradition and the tyranny of his own passions. No one is completely free from either, and in the measure of a man's emancipation he deserves to be called a free thinker."

"All human activity is prompted by desire."

"Both in thought and feeling, even though time is real, to realize the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom."

"Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love."

"Education as a political weapon could not exist if we respected the rights of children. If we respected the rights of children, we should educate them so as to give them the knowledge and the mental habits required for forming independent opinions; but education as a political institution endeavors to form habits and to circumscribe knowledge in such a way as to make one set of opinions inevitable. "

"Altogether it will be found that a quiet life is characteristic of great men, and that their pleasures have not been of the sort that would look exciting to the outward eye."