I had supposed until that time that it was quite common for parents to love their children, but the war persuaded me that it is a rare exception. I had supposed that most people liked money better than almost anything else, but I discovered that they liked destruction even better. I had supposed that intellectuals frequently loved truth, but I found here again that not ten per cent of them prefer truth to popularity.

It is not known why the Lord made the human body as he did, since one might suppose that omnipotence could have made it such as would not have shocked the nice people.

Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery, and in such a world hopes could only be irrational.

The man who suffers from a sense of sin is suffering from a particular kind of self-love. In all this vast universe the thing that appears to him of most importance is that he himself should be virtuous. It is a grave defect in certain forms of traditional religion that they have encouraged this particular kind of self-absorption.

This illustrates an important truth, namely, that the worse your logic, the more interesting the consequences to which it gives rise.

The qualities most needed are charity and tolerance, not some form of fanatical faith such as is offered to us by the various rampant isms

The problem with the wise is they are so filled with doubts while the dull are so certain.