I have come to realize that an early symptom of approaching mental illness is the belief that one's work is terribly important. If you consider your work very important you should take a day off.

The luxury to disparage freedom is the privilege of those who already possess it.

It is not my prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.

Moral progress has consisted in the main of protest against cruel customs, and of attempts to enlarge human sympathy.

The first step in a fascist movement is the combination under an energetic leader of a number of men who possess more than the average share of leisure, brutality, and stupidity. The next step is to fascinate fools and muzzle the intelligent, by emotional excitement on the one hand and terrorism on the other.

Philosophy arises from an unusually obstinate attempt to arrive at real knowledge. What passes for knowledge in ordinary life suffers from three defects: it is cocksure, vague and self-contradictory. The first step towards philosophy consists in becoming aware of these defects, not in order to rest content with a lazy scepticism, but in order to substitute an amended kind of knowledge which shall be tentative, precise and self-consistent.

Africans had to be taught that nudity is wicked; this was done very cheaply by missionaries.