Every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the necessary analysis and justification, is found either to be not really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which we are using the word, logical.

It appeared that after first contemplating a book on some subject, and after giving serious preliminary attention to it, I needed a period of subconscious incubation which could not be hurried and was if anything impeded by deliberate thinking.... Having, by a time of very intense concentration, planted the problem in my subconsciousness, it would germinate underground until, suddenly, the solution emerged with a blinding clarity, so that it only remained to write down what happened as if in a revelation.

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.

[Industrialism's soon diminishing] capacity to supply human needs could be prevented if men exercised any restraint or foresight in their present frenzied exploitation.

I feel as if one would only discover on one's death bed what one ought to have lived for

For some reason which I have failed to understand, many people like the system [scientific totalitarianism] when it is Russian but disliked the very same system when it was German. I am compelled to think that this is due to the power of labels; these people like whatever is labelled ‘Left’ without examining whether the label has any justification.

It would now be technically possible to unify the world, abolish war and poverty altogether, if men desired their own happiness more than the misery of their enemies.