Without civic morality communities perish; without personal morality their survival has no value.

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

Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken.

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

Uncertainty in the pressure of vivid hopes and fears is painful, but must be endured if we wish to live without the support of comforting fairy tales.

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man.

...I am afraid that education is conceived more in terms of indoctrination by most school officials than in terms of enlightenment. My own belief is that education must be subversive if it is to be meaningful. By this I mean that it must challenge all the things we take for granted, examine all accepted assumptions, tamper with every sacred cow, and instill a desire to question and doubt. Without this the mere instruction to memorise data is empty. The attempt to enforce conventional mediocrity on the young is criminal.