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It needs some intelligence to be truly selfish. The unintelligent can only be self-righteous.

To know a person's religion we need not listen to his profession of faith but must find his brand of intolerance.

Laughter to begin with was probably glee at the misfortunes of others. The baring of the teeth in laughter hints at its savage ancestry. Animals have no malice, hence also no laughter. They never savor the sudden glory of Schadenfreude. It was its infectious quality that made of laughter a medium of mutuality.

Animals can learn, but it is not by learning that they become dogs, cats, or horses. Only man has to learn to become what he is supposed to be.

The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; it should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society is a learning society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together.

In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.

It is loneliness that makes the loudest noise. This is true of men as of dogs.

The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness.The remarkable thing is that the cessation of the inner dialogue marks also the end of our concern with the world around us. It is as if we noted the world and think about it only when we have to report it to ourselves.

It is easier to love humanity than to love your neighbor.

We probably have a greater love for those we support than for those who support us. Our vanity carries greater weight than our self-interest.

There is probably an element of malice in the readiness to overestimate people: we are laying up for ourselves the pleasure of later cutting them down to size.

We have rudiments of reverence for the human body, but we consider as nothing the rape of the human mind.

What monstrosities would walk the streets were some people's faces as unfinished as their minds.

There is no reason why humanity cannot be served equally by weighty and trivial motives.

Only the individual who has come to terms with his self can have a dispassionate attitude toward the world.

In every passionate pursuit, the pursuit counts more than the object pursued.

When the Greeks said, "Whom the gods love die young," they probably meant, as Lord Sankey suggested, that those favored by the gods stay young till the day they die; young and playful.

The taint inherent in absolute power is not its inhumanity but its antihumanity.

When the weak want to give an impression of strength they hint menacingly at their capacity for evil. It is by its promise of a sense of power that evil often attracts the weak.

The less justified a man is in claiming excellence for his own self, the more ready he is to claim all excellence for his nation, his religion, his race or his holy cause.