Remote from human passions, remote even from the pitiful facts of nature, the generations have gradually created an ordered cosmos [mathematics], where pure thought can dwell in its natural home.

In human relations one should penetrate to the core of loneliness in each person and speak to that.

Almost all education has a political motive: it aims at strengthening some group, national or religious or even social, in the competition with other groups. It is this motive, in the main, which determines the subjects taught, the knowledge offered and the knowledge withheld, and also decides what mental habits the pupils are expected to acquire. Hardly anything is done to foster the inward growth of mind and spirit; in fact, those who have had the most education are very often atrophied in their mental and spiritual life.

The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.

Dogmatism is the greatest of mental obstacles to human happiness.

For my part, the thing I would wish to obtain from money would be leisure with security. But what the typical modern man desires to get with it is more money, with a view to ostentation, splendour, and the outshining of those who have hitherto been his equals.

Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.