QUOTES
If
there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own
happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have paradise
in a few years.
Patriotism
is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
The
good life, as I conceive it, is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good
you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.
The
greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow
a solution.
The
most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good
evidence either way.
The
whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain
of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.
Conventional
people are roused to fury by departure from convention, largely because they regard
such departure as a criticism of themselves.
Fear
is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To
conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
I
think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I
shouldn't wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.
It
is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from
living freely and nobly.
The
fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not
utterly absurd.
The
secret of happiness is this: let your interests be as wide as possible, and let
your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible
friendly rather than hostile.
War
does not determine who is right - only who is left.
War...
seems a mere madness, a collective insanity.
This
idea of weapons of mass extermination is utterly horrible and is something which
no one with one spark of humanity can tolerate.
Collective
fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who
are not regarded as members of the herd.