Thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit.

When you want to teach children to think, you begin by treating them seriously when they are little, giving them responsibilities, talking to them candidly, providing privacy and solitude for them, and making them readers and thinkers of significant thoughts from the beginning. That’s if you want to teach them to think.

The happy life is to an extraordinary extent the same as the good life.

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion go hand in hand.

Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.

One of the chief obstacles to intelligence is credulity, and credulity could be enormously diminished by instructions as to the prevalent forms of mendacity. Credulity is a greater evil in the present day than it ever was before, because, owing to the growth of education, it is much easier than it used to be to spread misinformation, and, owing to democracy, the spread of misinformation is more important than in former times to the holders of power.