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

Beware the man of the single book

Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.

There's a Bible on that shelf there. But I keep it next to Voltaire - poison and antidote.

Much of the most important evils that mankind have to consider are those which they inflict upon each other through stupidity or malevolence or both.

In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces; but in thought, in aspiration, we are free, free from our fellowmen, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the tyranny of death.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.