I believe myself that romantic love is the source of the most intense delights that life has to offer. In the relation of a man and woman who love each other with passion and imagination and tenderness, there is something of inestimable value, to be ignorant of which is a great misfortune to any human being.

At first it seems obvious, but the more you think about it the stranger the deductions from this axiom seem to become; in the end you cease to understand what is meant by it.

The human animal, like others, is adapted to a certain amount of struggle for life [and] the mere absence of effort from his life removes an essential ingredient of happiness. [. . .] He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.

The rules of logic are to mathematics what those of structure are to architecture.

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

I do not pretend to be able to prove that there is no God. I equally cannot prove that Satan is a fiction. The Christian god may exist; so may the gods of Olympus, or of ancient Egypt, or of Babylon. But no one of these hypotheses is more probable than any other: they lie outside the region of even probable knowledge, and therefore there is no reason to consider any of them.

From India to Spain, the brilliant civilization of Islam flourished. What was lost to christendom at this time was not lost to civilization, but quite the contrary.