Every sane and sensible and quiet thing we do is absolutely ignored by the press.

Most political leaders acquire their position by causing large numbers of people to believe that these leaders are actuated by altruistic desires

I am compelled to fear that science will be used to promote the power of dominant groups rather than to make men happy.

There is no logical impossibility in the hypothesis that the world sprang into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, with a population that "remembered" a wholly unreal past. There is no logically necessary connection between events at different times; therefore nothing that is happening now or will happen in the future can disprove the hypothesis that the world began five minutes ago.

What men really want is not knowledge but certainty.

Arithmetic must be discovered in just the same sense in which Columbus discovered the West Indies, and we no more create numbers than he created the Indians.

It is not by delusion, however exalted, that mankind can prosper, but only by unswerving courage in the pursuit of truth.