Conquer the world by intelligence, and not merely by being slavishly subdued by the terror that comes from it.

Beggars do not envy millionaires, though of course they will envy other beggars who are more successful.

Unrestricted nationalism is, in the long run, incompatible with world peace.

For some reason which I have failed to understand, many people like the system [scientific totalitarianism] when it is Russian but disliked the very same system when it was German. I am compelled to think that this is due to the power of labels; these people like whatever is labelled ‘Left’ without examining whether the label has any justification.

Boys and young men acquire readily the moral sentiments of their social milieu, whatever these sentiments may be.

The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard, chiefly I think, because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses.

Very few men can be genuinely happy in a life involving continual self-assertion against the skepticism of the mass of mankind, unless they can shut themselves up in a coterie and forget the cold outer world. The man of science has no need of a coterie, since he is thought well of by everybody except his colleagues. The artist, on the contrary, is in the painful situation of having to choose between being despised and being despicable.