All serious innovation is only rendered possible by some accident enabling unpopular persons to survive.

Happiness is not best achieved by those who seek it directly.

When we have told how things behave when they are electrified, and under what circumstances they are electrified, we have told all there is to know

The knowledge exists by which universal happiness can be secured; the chief obstacle to its utilization for that purpose is the teaching of religion. Religion prevents our children from having a rational education; religion prevents us from removing the fundamental causes of war; religion prevents us from teaching the ethic of scientific cooperation in place of the old fierce doctrines of sin and punishment. It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.

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

Unfortunately, however, power is sweet, and the man who in the beginning seeks power merely in order to have scope for his benevolence is likely, before long, to love the power for its own sake.

Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth.