The future possibilities of space-travel, which are now left mainly to unfounded fantasy, could be more soberly treated without ceasing to be interesting and could show to even the most adventurous of the young that a world without war need not be a world without adventurous and hazardous glory. To this kind of contest there is no limit. Each victory is only a prelude to another, and no boundaries can be set to rational hope.
The slave is doomed to worship time and fate and death, because they are greater than anything he finds in himself, and because all his thoughts are of things which they devour.
Never let yourself be diverted, either by what you wish to believe, or what you think could have beneficent social effects if it were believed; but look only and solely at what are the facts.
The theoretical understanding of the world, which is the aim of philosophy, is not a matter of great practical importance to animals, or to savages, or even to most civilised men.
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
I think we ought always to entertain our opinions with some measure of doubt. I shouldn’t wish people dogmatically to believe any philosophy, not even mine.
I remain convinced that obstinate addiction to ordinary language in our private thoughts is one of the main obstacles to progress in philosophy.
It is evident as a matter of logic that, since they (world religions) disagree, not more than one of them can be true.
The method of ‘postulating’ what we want has many advantages ; they are the same as the advantages of theft over honest toil.
William James describes a man who got the experience from laughing-gas; whenever he was under its influence, he knew the secret of the universe, but when he came to, he had forgotten it. At last, with immense effort, he wrote down the secret before the vision had faded. When completely recovered, he rushed to see what he had written. It was: A smell of petroleum prevails throughout.
Grammar and ordinary language are bad guides to metaphysics. A great book might be written showing the influence of syntax on philosophy.
It is possible that mankind is on the threshold of a golden age; but, if so, it will be necessary first to slay the dragon that guards the door, and this dragon is religion.
There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels? I appeal as a human being to human beings; remember your humanity, and forget the rest.
Philosophy, from the earliest times, has made greater claims, and achieved fewer results, than any other branch of learning.
I dislike Nietzsche because he likes the contemplation of pain, because he erects conceit into a duty, because the men whom he most admires are conquerors, whose glory is cleverness in causing men to die.
Whoever wishes to become a philosopher must learn not to be frightened by absurdities.
My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.
The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.
Those who have never known the deep intimacy and the intense companionship of happy mutual love have missed the best thing that life has to give.
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already 3-parts dead.
The fundamental concept in social science is Power, in the same sense in which Energy is the fundamental concept in physics.
To teach how to live without certainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who study it.
Almost everything that distinguishes the modern world from earlier centuries is attibutable to science, which achieved its most spectacular triumphs in the seventeenth century.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own.
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.
Dogmatism and skepticism are both, in a sense, absolute philosophies; one is certain of knowing, the other of not knowing. What philosophy should dissipate is certainty, whether of knowledge or ignorance.
It is not what the man of science believes that distinguishes him, but how and why he believes it. His beliefs are tentative, not dogmatic; they are based on evidence, not on authority or intuition.
The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of the instincts leading men to philosophy.
Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.
Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines.
The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the cooperation or consent of his deliberate reason.