Modern science is necessarily a double-edged tool, a tool that cuts both ways. ... There is no doubt that a Zeppelin is a wonderful thing; but that did not prevent it from becoming a horrible thing.

Hell is God's great compliment to the reality of human freedom and the dignity of human choice.

Surely we cannot take an open question like the supernatural and shut it with a bang, turning the key of the madhouse on all the mystics of history. You cannot take the region of the unknown and calmly say that, though you know nothing about it, you know all the gates are locked. We do not know enough about the unknown to know that it is unknowable.

It is much easier to write a good Times leading article than a good joke in Punch.

Progress is the mother of all problems.

The true object of human life is play.

When you have really exhausted an experience you always reverence and love it.