Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.

Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In this respect my travels were very useful to me.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.

(on A History of Western Philosophy) I was sometimes accused by reviewers of writing not a true history but a biased account of the events that I arbitrarily chose to write of. But to my mind, a man without a bias cannot write interesting history - if, indeed, such man exists.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

Curious learning not only makes unpleasant things less unpleasant but also makes pleasant things more pleasant.

Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.