[Regarding] the convention that clergymen are more virtuous than other men. Any average selection of mankind, set apart and told that it excels the rest in virtue, must tend to sink below the average.

Human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those who seem least to demand it.

It is in the nature of imperialism that citizens of the imperial power are always among the last to know-or care-about circumstances in the colonies.

Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attributable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.

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

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

There is no excuse for deceiving children. And when, as must happen in conventional families, they find that their parents have lied, they lose confidence in them and feel justified in lying to them.