Quotes

Men who are unhappy, like men who sleep badly, are always proud of the fact.

Although this may seem a paradox, all exact science is dominated by the idea of approximation.

All professions are plots against the laity.

Insight, untested and unsupported, is an insufficient guarantee of truth.

Men are born ignorant, not stupid. They are made stupid by education.

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 upon evidence, not on authority or intuition.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.

We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.

Of all forms of caution, caution in love is perhaps the most fatal to true happiness.

[on George Bernard Shaw] As an iconoclast he is admirable, as an icon somewhat less so.

One of the signs of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is important.

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.

Conformity means death. Only Protest gives a hope of life.

Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.

To my recollection there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.

A stupid man's report of what a clever man says can never be accurate, because he unconsciously translates what he hears into something he can understand.

Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know.