The chief object of education is not to learn things but to unlearn things.

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

Do not be proud of the fact that your grandmother was shocked at something which your are accustomed to seeing or hearing without being shocked. ... It may be that your grandmother was an extremely lively and vital animal and that you are a paralytic.

When men have come to the edge of a precipice, it is the lover of life who has the spirit to leap backwards, and only the pessimist who continues to believe in progress.

Christianity met the mythological search for romance by being a story and the philosophical search for truth by being a true story.

One can no more have a private religion than one can have a private sun or a private moon.

Like every book I never wrote, it is by far the best book I have ever written.