If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full.

There is an element of the busybody in our conception of virtue: unless a man makes himself a nuisance to a great many people, we do not think he can be an exceptionally good man.

The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists - that is why they invented hell.

A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.

[There has been] every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.

In our complex world, there cannot be fruitful initiative without government, but unfortunately there can be government without initiative.

If the West can claim superiority in anything, it is . . . in science and scientific technique.