In the words of Bertrand Russell:
Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially other people's.
Common sense, however it tries, cannot avoid being surprised from time to time.
It's easy to fall in love. The hard part is finding someone to catch you.
Undoubtedly the desire for food has been and still is one of the main causes of political events.
The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution.
Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.
Be isolated, be ignored, be attacked, be in doubt, be frightened, but do not be silenced.
Perhaps the best hope for the future of mankind is that ways will be found of increasing the scope and intensity of sympathy.
Machines deprive us of two things which are certainly important ingredients of human happiness, namely, spontaneity and variety.
It is likely that America will be more important during the next century or two, but after that it may well be the turn of China.
The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
Next to worry probably one of the most potent causes of unhappiness is envy.
A great many worries can be diminished by realizing the unimportance of the matter which is causing anxiety.
Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool's paradise, for only a fool will think that is happiness.
Belief in God and a future life makes it possible to go through life with less of stoic courage than is needed by skeptics.
Unrestricted nationalism is, in the long run, incompatible with world peace.
I am sometimes shocked by the blasphemies of those who think themselves pious.
Mathematics rightly viewed possesses not only truth but supreme beauty.
True happiness for human beings is possible only to those who develop their godlike potentialities to the utmost.
Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely.
Punctuality is a quality the need of which is bound up with social co-operation.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
If a Black Death could be spread throughout the world once in every generation survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full.
There is no nonsense so errant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
Most of the greatest evils that man has inflicted upon man have come through people feeling quite certain about something which, in fact, was false.
Every housemaid expects at least once a week as much excitement as would have lasted a Jane Austen heroine throughout a whole novel.
Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed.
The best life is the one in which the creative impulses play the largest part and the possessive impulses the smallest.
Your writing is never as good as you hoped; but never as bad as you feared.
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.
There is an artist imprisoned in each one of us. Let him loose to spread joy everywhere.
One of the most powerful of all our passions is the desire to be admired and respected.
The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts - the less you know the hotter you get.
When a man tells you that he knows the exact truth about anything you are safe in inferring that he is an inexact man.
Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion go hand in hand.
Unless you assume a God, the question of life's purpose is meaningless.
Extreme hopes are born of extreme misery, and in such a world hopes could only be irrational.
The pursuit of knowledge is, I think, mainly actuated by love of power. And so are all advances in scientific technique.
If I were granted omnipotence, and millions of years to experiment in, I should not think Man much to boast of as the final result of all my efforts.
To understand the actual world as it is, not as we should wish it to be, is the beginning of wisdom.
In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.
We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.
The secret to happiness is to face the fact that the world is horrible.
God and Satan alike are essentially human figures, the one a projection of ourselves, the other of our enemies.
There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.
Life is just one cup of coffee after another, and don't look for anything else.
If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do.
It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go.
Human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those who seem least to demand it.
I dislike Communism because it is undemocratic, and capitalism because it favors exploitation.
Ironclads and Maxim guns must be the ultimate arbiters of metaphysical truth.
Love should be a tree whose roots are deep in the earth, but whose branches extend into heaven.
The discipline in your life should be one determined by your own desires and your own needs, not put upon you by society or authority.
Belief systems provide a programme which relieves the necessity of thought.
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
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