Quote collection
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"The great majority of men and women, in ordinary times, pass through life without ever contemplating or criticising, as a whole, either their own conditions or those of the world at large."
"The most essential characteristic of scientific technique is that it proceeds from experiment, not from tradition."
"It has become a commonplace that aggressiveness also often has its roots in fear. I am inclined to think that this theory has been pushed too far. [...] The type of aggressiveness that is the outcome of timidity is not, I think, that which inspires great leaders; the great leaders, I should say, have an exceptional self-confidence which is not only on the surface, but penetrates deep into the subconscious."
"I am aware that many divines are far more marvelous than I am, and that I cannot wholly appreciate merits so far transcending my own. Nevertheless, even after making allowances under this head, I cannot but think that Omnipotence operating through all eternity might have produced something better."
"It is not known why the Lord made the human body as he did, since one might suppose that omnipotence could have made it such as would not have shocked the nice people."
"The psychology of adultery has been falsified by conventional morals, which assume, in monogamous countries, that attraction to one person cannot coexist with affection for another. Everybody knows that this is untrue."
"A generation educated in fearless freedom will have wider and bolder hopes than are possible to us"
"The reason is, and by rights ought to be, slave to the emotions."
"Through the greatness of the universe, which philosophy contemplates, the mind also is rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good."
"With subjectivity in philosophy, anarchism in politics goes hand in hand. Already during Luther's lifetime, unwelcome and unacknowledged disciples had developed the doctrine of Anabaptism, which for a time dominated the city of Munster. The Anabaptists repudiated all law since they held that good men will be guided at every moment by the Holy Spirit, who can not be bound by formulas. From this premise they arrive at communism and sexual promiscuity; they were therefore exterminated after a heroic resistance."
"Unfortunately, however, power is sweet, and the man who in the beginning seeks power merely in order to have scope for his benevolence is likely, before long, to love the power for its own sake."
"As a lover of truth, the national propaganda of all the belligerent nations sickened me. As a lover of civilization, the return to barbarism appalled me."
"The thing that I should wish to obtain from money would be leisure with security."
"So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it."
"The human animal, like others, is adapted to a certain amount of struggle for life [and] the mere absence of effort from his life removes an essential ingredient of happiness. [. . .] He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness."
"I did not, however, commit suicide, because I wished to know more of mathematics."
"Education ought to foster the wish for truth, not the conviction that some particular creed is the truth."
"Frege has the merit of ... finding a third assertion by recognising the world of logic which is neither mental nor physical."
"In all the creative work that I have done, what has come first is a problem, a puzzle involving discomfort."
"Literature is inexhaustible, with every book a homage to infinity"