In all the creative work that I have done, what has come first is a problem, a puzzle involving discomfort.

A good social system is not to be secured by making people unselfish, but, by making their own vital impulses fit in with other peoples. This is feasible. Those who have produced stoic philosophies have all had enough to eat and drink. I feel I shall find the truth on my deathbed and be surrounded by people too stupid to understand—fussing about medicines instead of searching for wisdom. I hate being all tidy like a book in a library where nobody reads – prison is horribly like that.

The whole realm of thought and opinion is utterly unsuited to public control; it ought to be as free, and as spontaneous as is possible. The state is justified in insisting that children shall be educated, but it is not justified in forcing their education to proceed on a uniform plan and to be directed to the production of a dead level of glib uniformity.

The first step in wisdom, as well as in morality, is to open the windows of the ego as wide as possible.

To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.

Organized people are just too lazy to look for things

Man is a rational animal – so at least I have been told. Throughout a long life, I have looked diligently for evidence in favour of this statement, but so far I have not had the good fortune to come across it, though I have searched in many countries spread over three continents.