The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.

When I say that children should be told about sex, I do not mean that they should be told only the bare physiological facts; they should be told whatever they wish to know. There should be no attempt to represent adults as more virtuous than they are, or sex as occurring only in marriage. There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them, and feel justified in lying to them.

The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.

In our complex world, there cannot be fruitful initiative without government, but unfortunately there can be government without initiative.

The main things which seem to me important on their own account, and not merely as means to other things, are knowledge, art, instinctive happiness, and relations of friendship or affection.

It is only in marriage with the world that our ideals can bear fruit; divorced from it, they remain barren.

Drunkeness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness.