There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.

To abandon the struggle for private happiness, to expel all eagerness of temporary desire, to burn with passion for eternal things-this is emancipation, and this is the free man's worship... United with his fellow men by the strongest of all ties, the tie of a common doom, the free man finds that a new vision is with him always, shedding over every daily task the light of love.

Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery, and in such a world hopes could only be irrational.

If throughout your life you abstain from murder, theft, fornication, perjury, blasphemy, and disrespect toward your parents, church, and your king, you are conventionally held to deserve moral admiration even if you have never done a single kind, generous or useful action. This very inadequate notion of virtue is an outcome of taboo morality, and has done untold harm.

If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his work important.

The desire to understand the world and the desire to reform it are the two great engines of progress, without which human society would stand still or retrogress.

One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.