To be happy in this world, especially when youth is past, it is necessary to feel oneself not merely an isolated individual whose day will soon be over, but part of the stream of life flowing on from the first germ to the remote and unknown future.

When I say that children should be told about sex, I do not mean that they should be told only the bare physiological facts; they should be told whatever they wish to know. There should be no attempt to represent adults as more virtuous than they are, or sex as occurring only in marriage. 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.

Politics is largely governed by sententious platitudes which are devoid of truth

If one lived for ever the joys of life would inevitably in the end lose their savour. As it is, they remain perennially fresh.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

Mankind has become so much one family that we cannot insure our own prosperity except by insuring that of everyone else.

Modern definitions of truth, such as those as pragmatism and instrumentalism, which are practical rather than contemplative, are inspired by industrialisation as opposed to aristocracy.