https://youtu.be/97Cd5yO6xQw?si=ylgsKBl-EezjYLka
Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.
War grows out of ordinary human nature.
The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt.
If everything has a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just be the world as God.
Human nature being what it is, people will insist upon getting some pleasure out of life.
All the conditions of happiness are realized in the life of the man of science.
The essence of the conception of righteousness, therefore, is to afford an outlet for sadism by cloaking cruelty as justice.
Man is not a solitary animal, and so long as social Life survives, self-realization cannot be the supreme principle of ethics.
The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
I do not think there can be any defense for the view that knowledge is ever undesirable.
The morality of work is the morality of slaves, and the modern world has no need of slavery.
You may kill an artist or a thinker, but you cannot acquire his art or his thought.
The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.
Liberty demands self-government, but not the right to interfere with others.
To abandon the struggle for private happiness, to expel all eagerness of temporary desire, to burn with passion for eternal things - this is emancipation, and this is the free man's worship.
Knowledge exists, and good will exists; but both remain impotent until they possess the proper organs for making themselves heard.
Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.
A certain amount of boredom is...essential to a happy life.
He forgets that to be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
If men would learn to pursue their own happiness rather than the misery of others, we can achieve a better life for everyone. adopting this would help turn our Earth into a paradise.
As soon as we abandon our reason and are content to rely on authority, there is no end to our troubles.
I want to say, in all seriousness, that a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organised diminution of work.
To the primitive mind, everything is either friendly or hostile; but experience has shown that friendliness and hostility are not the conceptions by which the world is to be understood.
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.
There is an element of the busybody in our conception of virtue: unless a man makes himself a nuisance to a great many people, we do not think he can be an exceptionally good man.
Happiness, as is evident, depends partly upon external circumstances and partly upon oneself.
Very few people are able to discount the effect of circumstances upon their own characters.
Envy is the basis of democracy.
The habit of thinking in terms of comparison is a fatal one.
There is much pleasure to be gained from useless knowledge.
Men have physical needs, and they have emotions. While physical needs are unsatisfied, they take first place; but when they are satisfied, emotions unconnected with them become important in deciding whether a man is to be happy or unhappy.
I should wish to see a world in which education aimed at mental freedom rather than imprisoning the minds of the young in rigid armor of dogma calculated to protect them through life against the shafts of impartial evidence.
The luxury to disparage freedom is the privilege of those who already possess it.
The objection to propaganda is not only its appeal to unreason, but still more the unfair advantage which it gives to the rich and powerful.
A philosopher who uses his professional competence for anything other except a disinterested search for truth is guilty of a kind of treachery.
Science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know we become insensitive to many things of very great importance.
My own belief is that in most ages and in most places obscure psychological forces led men to adopt systems involving quite unnecessary cruelty, and that this is still the case among the most civilized races at the present day.
It is not my prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws.
Drunkenness is temporary suicide: the happiness that it brings is merely negative, a momentary cessation of unhappiness.
To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead.
So long as there is death there will be sorrow, and so long as there is sorrow it can be no part of the duty of human beings to increase its amount, in spite of the fact that a few rare spirits know how to transmute it.
A mind perpetually open, will be a mind perpetually vacant!
The question is how to arrive at your opinions and not what your opinions are.
We need a morality based upon love of life, upon pleasure in growth and positive achievement, not upon repression and prohibition.
The true spirit of delight, the exaltation, the sense of being more than Man, which is the touchstone of the highest excellence, is to be found in mathematics as surely as poetry.
Machines have altered our way of life, but not our instincts. Consequently, there is maladjustment.
