Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.

It's easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.

Children, after being limbs of Satan in traditional theology and mystically illuminated angels in the minds of educational reformers, have reverted to being little devils; not theological demons inspired by the evil one, but scientific Freudian abominations inspired by the unconscious.

A good social system is not to be secured by making people unselfish, but, by making their own vital impulses fit in with other peoples. This is feasible. Those who have produced stoic philosophies have all had enough to eat and drink. I feel I shall find the truth on my deathbed and be surrounded by people too stupid to understand—fussing about medicines instead of searching for wisdom. I hate being all tidy like a book in a library where nobody reads – prison is horribly like that.

The Eugenic Society . . . is perpetually bewailing the fact that wage-earners breed faster than middle-class people.

A drop of water is not immortal; it can be resolved into oxygen and hydrogen. If, therefore, a drop of water were to maintain that it had a quality of aqueousness which would survive its dissolution we should be inclined to be skeptical. In like manner we know that the brain is not immortal.

Cynicism such as one finds very frequently among the most highly educated young men and women of the West, results from the combination of comfort and powerlessness.