My doctor said to me afterwards, 'When you were ill you behaved like a true philosopher. Every time you came to yourself you made a joke.' I never had a compliment that pleased me more.

John Locke invented common sense, and only Englishmen have had it ever since!

What else is there to make life tolerable? We stand on the shore of an ocean, crying to the night and to emptiness. Sometimes a voice of one drowning, and in a moment the silence returns. The world seems to me quite dreadful, the unhappiness of many people is very great, and I often wonder how they all endure it. It is usually the central thing around which their lives are built, and I suppose if they did not live most of their lives in the things of the moment, they would not be able to go on.

The chicken noticed that the farmer came every day to feed it. It predicted that the farmer would continue to bring food every day. Inductivists think that the chicken had "extrapolated" its observations into a theory, and that each feeding time added justification to that theory. Then one day the farmer came and wrung the chicken's neck. This inductively justifies the conclusion that induction cannot justify any conclusion.

Orthodoxy is the grave of intelligence, no matter what orthodoxy it may be.

No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.

Physics, owing to the simplicity of its subject matter, has reached a higher state of development than any other science.