47 quotes
British philosopher and logician (1872–1970)
“We know very little, and yet it is astonishing that we know so much, and still more astonishing that so little knowledge can give us so much power.”
"We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach."
on Philosophy
"Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
on Fear
"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth -- more than ruin, more even than death."
"...what is the use of making everybody rich if the rich themselves are miserable?"
on Happiness
"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so sure of themselves and wiser people so full of doubts."
on Wisdom
"[T]he infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell."
on Ethics
"The central problem of our age is how to act decisively in the absence of certainty."
"In all affairs it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."
"Nothing can penetrate the loneliness of the human heart except the highest intensity of the sort of love the religious teachers have preached."
on Love
"The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces the more astonishing becomes what human beings have achieved."
"Those who fear life are already three parts dead."
"Real life is to most men ... a perpetual compromise between the ideal and the possible."
on Life
"Boredom is therefore a vital problem for the moralist, since at least half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it."
"Every man wherever he goes is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions which move with him like flies on a summer day."
on Perception
"The reformative effect of punishment is a belief that dies hard chiefly I think because it is so satisfying to our sadistic impulses."
on Justice
"Nothing is so exhausting as indecision and nothing is so futile."
"Mathematics possesses not only truth but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere like that of a sculpture."
"Patriots always talk of dying for their country but never of killing for their country."
on Truth
"Education is not to be viewed as something like filling a vessel with water but, rather, assisting a flower to grow in its own way"
on Education
"Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear."
