The whole realm of thought and opinion is utterly unsuited to public control; it ought to be as free, and as spontaneous as is possible. The state is justified in insisting that children shall be educated, but it is not justified in forcing their education to proceed on a uniform plan and to be directed to the production of a dead level of glib uniformity.

Anything you're good at contributes to happiness.

Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.

Science is what we know, and philosophy is what we don't know.

The most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition. The experimental habit of mind is a difficult one for most people to maintain; indeed, the science of one generation has already become the tradition of the next

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

Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle.