There was, I think, never any reason to believe in any innate superiority of the male, except his superior muscle.

Contempt for happiness is usually contempt for other people's happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race.

It is clear that thought is not free if the profession of certain opinions makes it impossible to earn a living.

Brief and powerless is man's life; on him and all his race the slow, sure doom falls pitiless and dark.

The opposition of instinct and reason is mainly illusory. Instinct, intuition, or insight is what first leads to the beliefs which subsequent reason confirms or confutes; but the confirmation, where it is possible, consists, in the last analysis, of agreement with other beliefs no less instinctive. Reason is a harmonizing, controlling force rather than a creative one. Even in the most purely logical realms, it is insight that first arrives at what is new.

It appeared to me obvious that the happiness of mankind should be the aim of all action, and I discovered to my surprise that there were those who thought otherwise.

There are certain things that our age needs, and certain things that it should avoid. It needs compassion and a wish that mankind should be happy; it needs the desire for knowledge and the determination to eschew pleasant myths; it needs, above all, courageous hope and the impulse to creativeness.