Opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a-quarreling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy. -- David Hume

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection. -- Henri Poincare

The man who gets angry at the right things and with the right people, and in the right way and at the right time and for the right length of time, is commended. -- Aristotle

The vices of the USA are always before us; but the virtues are not sufficiently remembered. -- Roger Scruton

However benevolent men may be in their intentions, they cannot know what women want and what suits the necessities of women's lives as well as women know these things themselves. -- Millicent Fawcett

For knowledge is itself power. -- Francis Bacon

The word "philosophy" means "love of wisdom". But, shhh, don't tell. Most of us don't like wisdom as more than a friend. -- Rose Woodhouse

'I think, therefore I am,' is the statement of an intellectual who underrates toothaches. -- Milan Kundera

Socrates said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world. -- Plutarch

Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world. -- Arthur Schopenhauer

A scientist can hardly meet with anything more undesirable than to have the foundations give way just as the work is finished. I was put in this position by a letter from Mr. Bertrand Russell when the work was nearly through the press. -- Gottlob Frege

All people, however fanatical they may be in their zeal to disparage and to fight capitalism, implicitly pay homage to it by passionately clamoring for the products it turns out. -- Ludwig Von Mises

The action is best, which procures the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers. -- Francis Hutcheson

We are survival machines - robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. -- Richard Dawkins

[S]econdary and latterly tertiary education has created a large population of people... who have been educated far beyond their capacity to undertake analytical thought. -- Peter Medawar

As the brain changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream. -- William James

They firmly believe in witches; though they will not believe nor attend to the most simple proposition of Euclid. -- David Hume

The value of a whole must not be assumed to be the same as the sum of the value of its parts. -- G.E. Moore

Can one be a saint if God does not exist? That is the only concrete problem I know of today. -- Albert Camus

He who fears he shall suffer, already suffers what he fears. -- Michel de Montaigne

Theology and Absolute Ethics are two famous subjects which we have realised to have no real objects. -- Frank Ramsey

All men are liable to error; and most men are, in many points, by passion or interest, under temptation to it. -- John Locke

Sociology is the science with the greatest number of methods and the least results. -- Henri Poincare

If some great Power would agree to make me always think what is true and do what is right, on condition of being turned into a sort of clock and wound up every morning before I got out of bed, I should instantly close with the offer. -- Thomas Huxley

If chance is defined as an event produced by random motion without any causal nexus, I would say that there is no such thing as chance. -- Boethius

I was told that the Chinese said they would bury me by the Western Lake and build a shrine to my memory. I have some slight regret that this did not happen, as I might have become a god, which would have been very chic for an atheist. -- Bertrand Russell

Anyone who says that Darwinian evolution is directed towards the highest form of organism, humankind, has obviously never lived with teenagers. -- Michael Ruse

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. -- Søren Kierkegaard

The fact of having been born is a bad augury for immortality. -- George Santayana

Most of what was achieved in the history of the West from the 16th century onwards... was wrested from the bitter reactionary grip of religion inch by painful and frequently bloody inch. -- Anthony Grayling

There is no theory of a God, of an author of nature, of an origin of the Universe, which is not utterly repugnant to my facilities... -- Harriet Martineau

If justice and righteousness perish, human life would no longer have any value in the world. -- Immanuel Kant

I do not recommend any legislative action against hermeneutics. I am a liberal person opposed to all unnecessary state limitation of individual liberties. Hermeneutics between consenting adults should not in my view be the object of any statutory restrictions. -- Ernest Gellner

The 'dirty secret of contemporary neuroscience': we have no idea what the correct level of analysis is, because there is no universally accepted theory of how the brain codes information. -- John Searle

The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference. -- Richard Dawkins

It would be nice to think that if there is a truth it could be made comprehensible, convincing, compelling. I would be disappointed if it turns out that the philosophical truth is not comprehensible, convincing and compelling. -- David Chalmers

The praise of ancient authors proceeds not from the reverence of the dead, but from the competition, and mutual envy of the living. -- Thomas Hobbes

The Established church... will more readily pardon an attack on thirty-eight of its thirty-nine articles than on one thirty-ninth of its income. -- Karl Marx

Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and the bad; but the greatest part of mankind float betwixt vice and virtue. -- David Hume

Even if a civil society were to dissolve itself by the vote of all its members... nevertheless, before they go, the last murderer in prison must be executed. -- Immanuel Kant

We understandably do not want to see ourselves as bits and bytes. But unless we begin conceptualizing ourselves in this way, we leave it to others to do it for us. -- Colin Koopman

The feeling of awed wonder that science can give us is one of the highest experiences of which the human psyche is capable. -- Richard Dawkins

The For-itself, in fact, is nothing but the pure annihilation of the In-itself; it is like a hole of being at the heart of Being. -- Sartre

'I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.' -- Lewis Carroll

Part of the wish to die may be the wish not to become a burdon to our families... I just want that motive to be recognised as a respectable motive. -- Mary Warnock

I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own. -- Margaret Fuller

No one can be perfectly free till all are free. -- Herbert Spencer

Scipio used to say that he was never less idle than when he had nothing to do and never less lonely than when he was alone. An admirable sentiment, in truth, and becoming to a great and wise man. -- Cicero

...Mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and utter hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly. -- Woody Allen

I often long to be simple and good, never say a clever thing again, never bother about subtle points, but give up my life to love of my neighbour. This is really a temptation - but it is Satan in an angelic form. -- Bertrand Russell