If life is to be fully human it must serve some end which seems, in some sense, outside human life, some end which is impersonal and above mankind, such as God or truth or beauty. Those who best promote life do not have life for their purpose. They aim rather at what seems like a gradual incarnation, a bringing into our human existence of something eternal, something that appears to imagination to live in a heaven remote from strife and failure and the devouring jaws of Time.

...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.

We know too much and feel too little. At least, we feel too little of those creative emotions from which a good life springs.

Liberty is the right to do what I like; licence, the right to do what you like.

Most people believe in God because they have been taught from early infancy to do it, and that is the main reason. Then I think that the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety.

Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau.

Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion go hand in hand.