If humans were in fact the members of a truly social species, and if their individual differences were trifling and could be completely ironed out by appropriate conditioning, then, obviously, there would be no need for liberty and the State would be justified in persecuting the heretics who demanded it.

The impulse to cruelty is, in many people, almost as violent as the impulse to sexual love - almost as violent and much more mischievous.

Oh, how desperately bored, in spite of their grim determination to have a Good Time, the majority of pleasure-seekers really are!

What’s the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when anthrax bombs are popping all around you?

It takes a certain amount of intelligence and imagination to realize the extraordinary queerness and mysteriousness of the world in which we live.

What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing.