Pride consists in a man making his personality the only test, instead of making truth the test. The sceptic feels himself too large to measure life by the largest things; and ends by measuring it by the smallest thing of all.
When learned men begin to use their reason, then I generally discover that they haven't got any.
The worst moment for an atheist is when he feels a profound sense of gratitude and has no one to thank.
There is no such thing as education. The thing is merely a loose phrase for the passing on to others of whatever truth or virtue we happen to have ourselves. It is typical of our time that the more doubtful we are about the value of philosophy, the more certain we are about the value of education. That is to say, the more doubtful we are about whether we have any truth, the more certain we are (apparently) that we can teach it to our children.
There are two kinds of paradoxes. They are not so much the good and the bad, nor even the true and the false. Rather they are the fruitful and the barren; the paradoxes which produce life and the paradoxes that merely announce death. Nearly all modern paradoxes merely announce death.
The greatest political storm flutters only a fringe of humanity. But an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children literally alter the destiny of nations.
The best kind of giving is thanksgiving.
The trouble with Christianity is, not that its failed, but that it's never been tried . . . not that it can't remake the world, but that it's difficult.
The trouble with always trying to preserve the health of the body is that it is so difficult to do without destroying the health of the mind.
Men in England are ruled, at this minute by the clock, by brutes who refuse them bread, by liars who refuse them news, and by fools who cannot govern, and therefore wish to enslave.
One of the great disadvantages of hurry is that it takes such a long time.
Moderate strength is shown in violence, supreme strength is shown in levity.
A child's instinct is almost perfect in the matter of fighting. The child's hero is always the man or boy who defends himself suddenly and splendidly against aggression.
Atheism is indeed the most daring of all dogmas . . . for it is the assertion of a universal negative.
Man is not merely an evolution but rather a revolution.
Theology is simply that part of religion that requires brains.
Art consists of limitation. The most beautiful part of every picture is the frame.
What is called matriarchy is simply moral anarchy, in which the mother alone remains fixed because all the fathers are fugitive and irresponsible.
Evil comes at leisure like the disease. Good comes in a hurry like the doctor.
All conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change.
The modern world... has no notion except that of simplifying something by destroying nearly everything.
The fatal metaphor of progress, which means leaving things behind us, has utterly obscured the real idea of growth, which means leaving things inside us.
A strange fanaticism fills our time: the fanatical hatred of morality, especially of Christian morality.
Employers will give time to eat, time to sleep; they are in terror of a time to think.
Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it.
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