Above all, do not talk yourself out of good ideas by trying to expound them at haphazard meetings.

Since it is seldom clear whether intellectual activity denotes a superior mode of being or a vital deficiency, opinion swings between considering intellect a privilege and seeing it as a handicap

Vanity is a static thing. It puts it faith in what it has, and is easily wounded. Pride is active, and satisfied only with what it can do, hence accustomed not to feel small stings.

Since in every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition, an imperialist party demanding a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party demanding the conquest of power and a racialist party demanding internal purges against aliens - all of them, when appeals to greed and glory failed, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which was to say science incarnate.

The one thing that unifies men in a given age is not their individual philosophies but the dominant problem that these philosophies are designed to solve.

The mind tends to run along the groove of one's intention and overlook the actual expression.

Simple English is no one’s mother tongue. It has to be worked for.