When the qualities that now confer leadership have become universal, there will no longer be leaders and followers, and democracy will have been realized at last.

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.

We have in fact, two kinds of morality, side by side: one which we preach, but do not practice, and another which we practice, but seldom preach.

Three passions simple but overwhelmingly strong have governed my life: the longing for love the search for knowledge and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind.

There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less.

The world is full of injustice, and those who profit by injustice are in a position to administer rewards and punishments. The rewards go to those who invent ingenious justifications for inequality, the punishments to those who try to remedy it.

The true spirit of delight the exultation the sense of being more than Man which is the touchstone of the highest excellence is to be found in mathematics as surely as in poetry.

The secret of happiness is this: Let your interests be as wide as possible and let your reactions to the things and persons that interest you be as far as possible friendly rather than hostile.

The problem of political theory is how to combine that degree of individual initiative which is necessary for progress, with the degree of social cohesion which is necessary for survival.

The pleasure of work is open to anyone who can develop some specialised skill, provided that he can get satisfaction from the exercise of his skill without demanding universal applause.

The more we realize our minuteness and our impotence in the face of cosmic forces the more astonishing becomes what human beings have achieved.

The man who can centre his thoughts and hopes upon something transcending self can find a certain peace in the ordinary troubles of life, which is impossible to the pure egoist.

The habit of looking into the future and thinking that the whole meaning of the present lies in what it will bring forth is a pernicious one. There can be no value in the whole unless there is value in the parts.

The good life as I conceive it is a happy life. I do not mean that if you are good you will be happy - I mean that if you are happy you will be good.

The affection of parents makes infants feel safe in this dangerous world, and gives them boldness in experimentation and in exploration of their environments.

The Victorian Age, for all its humbug, was a period of rapid progress, because men were dominated by hope rather than fear. If we are again to have progress, we must again be dominated by hope.

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.

Self-respect will kip a man from being abject when he is in the power of enemies and will enable him to feel that he may be in the right when the world is against him.

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 great importance.

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.

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and kip out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

One should respect public opinion in so far as it is necessary to avoid starvation and to kip out of prison but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

Nothing can penetrate the loneliness of the human heart except the highest intensity of the sort of love the religious teachers have preached.

Many people when they fall in love look for a little haven of refuge from the world where they can be sure of being admired when they are not admirable and praised when they are not praiseworthy.

Many a man will have the courage to die gallantly, but will not have the courage to say, or even to think, that the cause for which he is asked to die is an unworthy one.

Love must feel the ego of the beloved person as important as one's own ego, and must realize the other's feelings and wishes as though they were one's own.

Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.

It is essential to happiness that our way of living should spring from our own deep impulses and not from the accidental tastes and desires of those who happen to be our neighbors, or even our relations.

In Labor movements generally, success through violence can hardly be expected except in circumstances where success without violence is attainable.

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.

If our logic is to find the common world intelligible, it must not be hostile, but must be inspired by a genuine acceptance such as is not usually to be found among metaphysicians.

If children learn of sex as a relation between their parents to which they owe their own existence, they learn of it in its best form and in connection with its biological purpose.

I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a servant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.

Freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.

Continuity of purpose is one of the most essential ingredients of happiness in the long run and for most men this comes chiefly through their work.

Advocates of capitalism like to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim: The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.

A child develops best when, like a young plant, he is left undisturbed in the same soil. Too much travel, too much variety of impressions, are not good for the young, and cause them as they grow up to become incapable of enduring fruitful monotony.