Each religion, so dear to those whose life it sanctifies, and fulfilling so necessary a function in the society that has adopted it, necessarily contradicts every other religion, and probably contradicts itself.

Order, for a liberal, means only peace; and the hope of a profound peace was one of the chief motives in the liberal movement. Concessions and tolerance and equality would thus have really led to peace, and to peace of the most radical kind, the peace of moral extinction.

... even if Lucretius was wrong, and the soul is immortal, it is nevertheless steadily changing its interests and its possessions.Our lives are mortal if our soul is not; and the sentiment which reconciled Lucretius to death is as much needed if we are to face many deaths, as if we are to face only one.

The dreamer can know no truth, not even about his dream, except by awaking out of it.

A man's memory may almost become the art of continually varying and misrepresenting his past, according to his interest in the present.

Prayer is not a substitute for work; it is an effort to work further and be efficient beyond the range of one's powers.

Wealth, religion, military victory have more rhetorical than efficacious worth.