A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one; it come as sincerely from the author's soul
My fate cannot be mastered; it can only be collaborated with and thereby, to some extent, directed. Nor am I the captain of my soul; I am only its noisiest passenger.
Those who believe that they are exclusively in the right are generally those who achieve something
That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent
It is a bit embarrassing to have been concerned with the human problem all one's life and find at the end that one has no more to offer by way of advice than 'try to be a little kinder
That all men are equal is a proposition which at ordinary times no sane individual has ever given his assent.
Experience is not what happens to you. It is what you do with what happens to you.
The proper study of mankind is books.
Most human beings have an absolute and infinite capacity for taking things for granted
Defined in psychological terms, a fanatic is a man who consciously overcompensates a secret doubt.
At least two thirds of our miseries spring from human stupidity, human malice, and those great motivators and justifiers of malice and stupidity, idealism, dogmatism and proselytizing zeal on behalf of religious or political idols.
I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.
One of the great attractions of patriotism it fulfills our worst wishes. In the person of our nation we are able, vicariously, to bully and cheat. Bully and cheat, what's more, with a feeling that we are profoundly virtuous.
Most ignorance is vincible ignorance. We don't know because we don't want to know.
But liberty, as we all know, cannot flourish in a country that is permanently on a war footing, or even a near-war footing. Permanent crisis justifies permanent control of everybody and everything by the agencies of the central government.
The quality of moral behavior varies in inverse ratio to the number of human beings involved.
Experience is not what happens to a man; it is what a man does with what happens to him.
To his dog, every man is Napoleon hence the constant popularity of dogs.
You never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion. . . . Dogs do not ritually urinate in the hope of persuading heaven to do the same and send down rain. Asses do not bray a liturgy to cloudless skies. Nor do cats attempt, by abstinence from cat's meat, to wheedle the feline spirits into benevolence. Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, quite intelligent enough.
Beauty is worse than wine; it intoxicates both the holder and the beholder
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