When we perceive any object of a familiar kind, much of what appears subjectively to be immediately given is really derived from past experience.

The method of "postulating" what we want has many advantages; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.

Although it is a gloomy view to suppose that life will die out, sometimes when I contemplate the things that people do with their lives I think it is almost a consolation

If you wish to be happy yourself, you must resign yourself to seeing others also happy.

When we look at a rock what we are seeing is not the rock, but the effect of the rock upon us.

If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation do you prefer the grain to the vote?

...the nonexistence of God makes more difference to some of us than to others. To me, it means that there is no absolute morality, that moralities are sets of social conventions devised by humans to satisfy their needs.