Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand-in-hand. It is because fear is at the basis of those two things. In this world we can now begin a little to understand things, and a little to master them by the help of science, which has forced its way step by step against the Christian religion, against the churches, and against the opposition of all the old precepts.

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 only through imagination that men become aware of what the world might be; without it, ‘progress’ would become mechanical and trivial.

Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence, no matter what orthodoxy it may be.

Bad philosophers may have a certain influence; good philosophers, never.

An individual human existence should be like a river