To the primitive mind, everything is either friendly or hostile; but experience has shown that friendliness and hostility are not the conceptions by which the world is to be understood.

Passive acceptance of the teacher's wisdom is easy to most boys and girls. It involves no effort of independent thought, and seems rational because the teacher knows more than his pupils; it is moreover the way to win the favour of the teacher unless he is a very exceptional man. Yet the habit of passive acceptance is a disastrous one in later life. It causes man to seek and to accept a leader, and to accept as a leader whoever is established in that position.

I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment.

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

The immense majority of intellectually eminent men disbelieve in the Christian religion, but they conceal the fact in public, because they are afraid of losing their incomes.

Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love.

In human relations one should penetrate to the core of loneliness in each person and speak to that.