Almost all education has a political motive: it aims at strengthening some group, national or religious or even social, in the competition with other groups. It is this motive, in the main, which determines the subjects taught, the knowledge offered and the knowledge withheld, and also decides what mental habits the pupils are expected to acquire. Hardly anything is done to foster the inward growth of mind and spirit; in fact, those who have had the most education are very often atrophied in their mental and spiritual life.

The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.

It is not known why the Lord made the human body as he did, since one might suppose that omnipotence could have made it such as would not have shocked the nice people.

Herd pressure is to be judged by two things: first, its intensity, and second, its direction.

There seems scarcely any limit to what could be done in the way of producing a good world, if only men would use science wisely.

Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.

Politics is concerned with herds rather than with individuals, and the passions which are important in politics are, therefore, those in which the various members of a given herd can feel alike.