I cannot favour laws such as that of Idaho, which allows sterilization of 'mental defectives, epileptics, habitual criminals, moral degenerates, and sex perverts.' The last two categories here are very vague . . . The law of Idaho would have justified the sterilization of Socrates, Plato, Julius Caesar, and St. Paul.

Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid, and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines.

The first effect of emancipation from the Church was not to make men think rationally, but to open their minds to every sort of antique nonsense

Those who advocate common usage in philosophy sometimes speak in a manner that suggests the mystique of the 'common man.'

There is no difference between someone who eats too little and sees Heaven and someone who drinks too much and sees snakes.

When two men of science disagree, they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since there is no criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but mutual hatred and an open or covert appeal to force.

All great books contain boring portions, and all great lives have contained uninteresting stretches.