Generalized intelligence and mental alertness are the most powerful enemies of dictatorship and at the same time the basic conditions of effective democracy.

In all activities of life, the secret of efficiency lies in an ability to combine two seemingly incompatible states: a state of maximum activity and a state of maximum relaxation.

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.

Some of the greatest advances in mathematics have been due to the invention of symbols, which it afterwards became necessary to explain; from the minus sign proceeded the whole theory of negative quantities.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons of history.

Man approaches the unattainable truth through a succession of errors.

For [D.H.] Lawrence, existence was one continuous convalescence; it was as though he were newly reborn from a mortal illness every day of his life. What these convalescent eyes saw, his most casual speech would reveal.