People reserve their best thinking for their professional specialties and, next in line, for serious matters confronting the alert citizen -economics, politics, the disposal of nuclear waste, etc. The day's work done, they want to be entertained.

The life of the wealthy is one long Sunday.

It is better to live under a tree in a jungle inhabited by tigers and elephants, to maintain oneself in such a place with ripe fruits and spring water, to lie down on grass and to wear the ragged barks of trees than to live amongst one's relations when reduced to poverty.

It may indeed be said that since Philosophy began to take a place in Germany, it has never looked so badly as at the present time - never have emptiness and shallowness overlaid it so completely, and never have they spoken and acted with such arrogance, as though all power were in their hands ! To combat the shallowness, to strive with German earnestness and honesty, to draw Philosophy out of the solitude into which it has wandered - to do such work as this we may hope that we are called by the higher spirit of our time.

The concept of space is not abstracted from external sensations.

Friends, the soil is poor, we must sow seeds in plenty for us to garner even modest harvests.

This body which called itself and which still calls itself the Holy Roman Empire was in no way holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.

Modern physics... reduces matter to a set of events which proceed outward from a centre. If there is something further in the centre itself, we cannot know about it, and it is irrelevant to physics.

Shallow men believe in luck.

That knowledge which adds greatness to character is knowledge so handled as to transform every phase of immediate experience.

Indeed, it may well be argued that one reason for the decline in science, art, and literature was the increasing absorption of the better minds into a new sort of intellectual pursuit, theology.

The human tendency to regard little things as important has produced very many great things. G 46 Variant translation: The inclination of people to consider small things as important has produced many great things.

There are many who know many things, yet are lacking in wisdom.

Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth - more than ruin, more even than death. Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless of the well-tried wisdom of the ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. It sees man, a feeble speck, surrounded by unfathomable depths of silence; yet it bears itself proudly, as unmoved as if it were lord of the universe. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.

Economy is a distributive virtue, and consists not in saving but selection. Parsimony requires no providence, no sagacity, no powers of combination, no comparison, no judgment.

One lives but once in the world.

There are some defeats more triumphant than victories.

Bad company is as instructive as licentiousness. One makes up for the loss of one's innocence with the loss of one's prejudices.

Literature, the strange entity so called,-that indeed is here. If Literature continue to be the haven of expatriated spiritualisms, and have its Johnsons, Goethes and true Archbishops of the World, to show for itself as heretofore, there may be hope in Literature. If Literature dwindle, as is probable, into mere merry-andrewism, windy twaddle, and feats of spiritual legerdemain, analogous to rope-dancing, opera-dancing, and street-fiddling with a hat carried round for halfpence, or for guineas, there will be no hope in Literature.

A logical theory may be tested by its capacity for dealing with puzzles, and it is a wholesome plan, in thinking about logic, to stock the mind with as many puzzles as possible, since these serve much the same purpose as is served by experiments in physical science.

Radio comes to us ostensibly with person to person directness that is private and intimate, while in more urgent fact, it is really a subliminal echo chamber of magic power to touch remote and forgotten chords.

You get tragedy where the tree, instead of bending, breaks.

Under the natural course of things each citizen tends towards his fittest function. Those who are competent to the kind of work they undertake, succeed, and, in the average of cases, are advanced in proportion to their efficiency; while the incompetent, society soon finds out, ceases to employ, forces to try something easier, and eventually turns to use.

Great and enduring civilizations like those of the Hindus and the Chinese were built upon this foundation and developed from it a discipline of self-knowledge which they brought to a high pitch of refinement both in philosophy and practice.

If you have had your attention directed to the novelties in thought in your own lifetime, you will have observed that almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.

Everywhere the human soul stands between a hemisphere of light and another of darkness on the confines of two everlasting hostile empires, - Necessity and Free Will.

To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.

When he was asked what advantage had accrued to him from philosophy, his answer was, "The ability to hold converse with myself."

Nietzsche ... did not settle for a demure civic conversation in the style of Richard Rorty's ironist, or saunter off with the smug nod that registers a deconstructive job neatly done. He was aware that his own criticisms and exposures owed both their motivation and their effect to the spirit of truthfulness. His aim was to see how far the values of truth could be revalued, how they might be understood in a perspective quite different from the Platonic and Christian metaphysics which had provided their principal source in the West up to now.

A hymn is the praise of God with song; a song is the exultation of the mind dwelling on eternal things, bursting forth in the voice.

I have never had the least sympathy with the a priori reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school. Nevertheless I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the Christian would call, and, so far as I can see, is justified in calling, atheist and infidel.

Every day should be passed as if it were to be our last.

Four snakes gliding up and down a hollow for no purpose that I could see - not to eat, not for love, but only gliding.

There is only one way to science-or to philosophy... to meet a problem, to see its beauty and fall in love with it; to get married to it, and to live with it happily, till death do ye part-unless you should meet another... more fascinating problem, or... obtain a solution. But even if you do... you may... discover, to your delight, the... a whole family of enchanting... perhaps difficult problem children for whose welfare you may work, with a purpose, to the end of your days.

So much of our time is spent in preparation, so much in routine and so much in retrospect, that the amount of each person's genius is confined to a very few hours.

The sense of mercy is found in all men; the sense of shame is found in all men; the sense of respect is found in all men; the sense of right and wrong is found in all men.

If countries were named after the words you first hear when you go there, England would have to be called Damn It.

It is difficulties that show what men are.

Meditation on the chance which led to the meeting of my mother and father is even more salutary than meditation on death.

We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many bodies were burned alive with the genuinely kind intention of saving souls from the eternal fire of hell. Only if we give up our authoritarian attitude in the realm of opinion, only if we establish the attitude of give and take, of readiness to learn from other people, can we hope to control acts of violence inspired by piety and duty.

Benevolence is the tranquil habitation of man, and righteousness is his straight path.

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

Radio affects most intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer-speaker and the listener. That is the immediate aspect of radio. A private experience. The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. This is inherent in the very nature of this medium, with its power to turn the psyche and society into a single echo chamber.

Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one consciously, by means of certain external symbols, conveys to others the feelings one has experienced, whereby people so infected by these feelings, also experience them.

It is impossible for motion to subsist without place, and void, and time.

A certain maxim of Logic which I have called Pragmatism has recommended itself to me for diverse reasons and on sundry considerations. Having taken it as my guide for most of my thought, I find that as the years of my knowledge of it lengthen, my sense of the importance of it presses upon me more and more. If it is only true, it is certainly a wonderfully efficient instrument. It is not to philosophy only that it is applicable. I have found it of signal service in every branch of science that I have studied. My want of skill in practical affairs does not prevent me from perceiving the advantage of being well imbued with pragmatism in the conduct of life.

That a woman is presented as a teacher, as a prototype of piety, cannot amaze anyone who knows that piety or godliness is fundamentally womanliness. ... from a woman you learn concern for the one thing needful, from Mary, sister of Lazarus, who sat silent at Christ's feet with her heart's choice: the one thing needful.

We are apt to imagine that this hubbub of Philosophy, Literature, and Religion, which is heard in pulpits, lyceums, and parlors, vibrates through the universe, and is as catholic a sound as the creaking of the earth's axle. But if a man sleeps soundly, he will forget it all between sunset and dawn.

Tis certainly a kind of indignity to philosophy, whose sovereign authority ought every where to be acknowledg'd, to oblige her on every occasion to make apologies for her conclusions, and justify herself to every particular art and science, which may be offended at her.

It is impossible that each of the elements should be infinite. For that is body which has interval on all sides; and that is infinite which has extension without bound.