The law of causality, I believe, like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them. We all feel instinctively, that our children's success reflect glory upon ourselves, while their failures make us feel shame. Unfortunately, the successes which cause us to swell with pride are often of an undesirable kind.... Neither happiness nor virtue, but worldly success, is what the average father desires for his children.

The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.

I've always thought respectable people scoundrels, and I look anxiously at my face every morning for signs of my becoming a scoundrel.

Self-respect will keep a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies, and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him.

Love, children, and work, are the great sources of fertilizing contact between the individual and the rest of the world.

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