"Society expresses its sympathy for the geniuses of the past to distract attention from the fact that it has no intention of being sympathetic to the geniuses of the present."

"The psychology of committees is a special case of the psychology of mobs."

"When someone says his conclusions are objective, he means that they are based on prejudices which many other people share."

"The basis of capitalism is that if a tiger rushes towards you, you need a gun. If you acquired a gun at some point in time previous to the tiger's attack, and have it ready to hand, this is useful. If you have not actually got a gun, but know that you could acquire one at some point in the future, this is not so good. The problem is to survive so as to reach the future. The essence of communism is that nobody may have guns unless everybody has guns, and the only way anybody can get guns is if the collective-at-large sees fit to make a universal issue. And you may not have a better gun than the collective sees fit to issue for everybody. So if the collective does not actually get round to issuing any guns at all, everybody will be equally likely to be eaten by tigers."

"Couched, of course, in tones of the utmost friendliness and benevolence, they unite in regretting that he [Somerset Maugham] was able to fulfil his own wishes."

"The human race has to be bad at psychology; if it were not, it would understand why it is bad at everything else."

"The remarkable thing about the human mind is its range of limitations."

"It is inconceivable that anything should be existing. It is not inconceivable that a lot of people should also be existing who are not interested in the fact that they exist. But it is certainly very odd."

"On the face of it there is something rather strange about human psychology. Human beings live in a state of mind called sanity, on a small planet in space. They are not quite sure whether the space around them is infinite or not, either way it is unthinkable. If they think about time, they find that it is inconceivable that it had a beginning. It is also inconceivable that it did not have a beginning. Thoughts of this kind are not disturbing to sanity, which is obviously a remarkable phenomenon that deserves more recognition."

"People accept their limitations so as to prevent themselves from wanting anything they might get."

"Astonishment is the only realistic emotion."