Quote collection
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"It is false to suggest that men must turn away from his desires in the interest of a higher duty. Men only responds to duty if he desires to do so. To understand men, you must understand their desires and the relative strength of those desires."
"Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you."
"When we perceive any object of a familiar kind, much of what appears subjectively to be immediately given is really derived from past experience."
"Neither the Church nor modern public opinion condemns petting, provided it stops short at a certain point."
"My own view on religion is . . . It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and . . . to chronicle eclipses . . . These two services I am prepared to acknowledge."
"Love and knowledge led upwards to the heavens."
"Look at me. Look at me is one of the fundamental desires of human heart."
"All the conditions of happiness are realized in the life of the man of science."
"Philosophy is that part of science which at present people chose to have opinions about, but which they have no knowledge about. Therefore every advance in knowledge robs philosophy of some problems which formerly it had ...and will belong to science."
"The significance of a fact is relative to [the general body of scientific] knowledge. To say that a fact is significant in science, is to say that it helps to establish or refute some general law; for science, though it starts from observation of the particular, is not concerned essentially with the particular, but with the general. A fact, in science, is not a mere fact, but an instance. In this the scientist differs from the artist, who, if he deigns to notice facts at all, is likely to notice them in all their particularity."
"Ideas and principles that do harm are as a rule, though not always, cloaks for evil passions."
"Much of the most important evils that mankind have to consider are those which they inflict upon each other through stupidity or malevolence or both."
"Children, after being limbs of Satan in traditional theology and mystically illuminated angels in the minds of educational reformers, have reverted to being little devils; not theological demons inspired by the evil one, but scientific Freudian abominations inspired by the unconscious."
"There is no difference between someone who eats too little and sees Heaven and someone who drinks too much and sees snakes."
"Right conduct can never, except by some rare accident, be promoted by ignorance or hindered by knowledge."
"Man can be stimulated by hope or driven by fear, but the hope and the fear must be vivid and immediate if they are to be effective without producing weariness."
"Of course not. After all, I may be wrong."
"All serious innovation is only rendered possible by some accident enabling unpopular persons to survive."
"War grows out of ordinary human nature."
"I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached."