(1872-1970)
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On the Personal:
Drunkenness is temporary suicide.
It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.
To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
If there were in the world today any large number of people who desired their own happiness more than they desired the unhappiness of others, we could have a paradise in a few years.
Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.
Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
On Politics and Empty Ideals:
Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame.
In America everybody is of the opinion that he has no social superiors, since all men are equal, but he does not admit that he has no social inferiors, for, from the time of Jefferson onward, the doctrine that all men are equal applies only upwards, not downwards.
Liberty is the right to do what I like; license, the right to do what you like.
To acquire immunity to eloquence is of the utmost importance to the citizens of a democracy
Religions, which condemn the pleasures of sense, drive men to seek the pleasures of power. Throughout history power has been the vice of the ascetic.
Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.
Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
On Philosophy and Science (Knowledge):
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.
Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.
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.
We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.
On Fear:
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.
One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.
Why is propaganda so much more successful when it stirs up hatred than when it tries to stir up friendly feeling?
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty.
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.
