If all our happiness is bound up entirely in our personal circumstances it is difficult not to demand of life more than it has to give.

Beware the man of the single book

If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do.

The fact that a belief has a good moral effect upon a man is no evidence whatsoever in favor of its truth. I'm not contending in a dogmatic way that there is not a God. What I'm contending is that we don't know that there is. I don't like the word "absolute." I don't think there is anything absolute whatever. The moral law, for example, is always changing. At one period in the development of the human race, almost everybody thought cannibalism was a duty.

When a man acts in ways that annoy us we wish to think him wicked, and we refuse to face the fact that his annoying behavior is the result of antecedent causes which, if you follow them long enough, will take you beyond the moment of his birth, and therefore to events for which he cannot be held responsible by any stretch of imagination... When a motorcar fails to start, we do not attribute its annoying behavior to sin, we do not say, you are a wicked motorcar, and you shall not have any more gasoline until you go.

All human activity is prompted by desire.

One of the main causes of trouble in the world is dogmatic and fanatical belief in some doctrine for which there is no adequate evidence