All Quotes

"No man who believes that all is for the best in this suffering world can keep his ethical values unimpaired, since he is always having to find excuses for pain and misery."

"Even when the experts all agree, they may well be mistaken."

"It seems that sin is geographical. From this conclusion, it is only a small step to the further conclusion that the notion of "sin" is illusory, and that the cruelty habitually practised in punishing it is unnecessary."

"It is a waste of energy to be angry with a man who behaves badly, just as it is to be angry with a car that won't go. The difference is that you can compel your car to go to a garage, but you cannot compel Hitler to go to a psychiatrist."

"The greatest challenge to any thinker is stating the problem in a way that will allow a solution."

"To choose one sock from each of infinitely many pairs of socks requires the Axiom of Choice, but for shoes the Axiom is not needed."

"Democracy is the process by which people choose the man who'll get the blame."

"Not enough evidence God! Not enough evidence!"

"War does not determine who is right – only who is left."

"In all affairs – love, religion, politics, or business – it's a healthy idea, now and then, to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."

"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."

"Few people can be happy unless they hate some other person, nation, or creed."

"I believe in using words, not fists... I believe in my outrage knowing people are living in boxes on the street. I believe in honesty. I believe in a good time. I believe in good food. I believe in sex."

"One must care about a world one will not see."

"A new moral outlook is called for in which submission to the powers of nature is replaced by respect for what is best in man. It is where this respect is lacking that scientific technique is dangerous."

"Better red than dead."

"None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear."

"If forty million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie."

"And it is only fair to state, with regard to modern journalists, that they always apologise to one in private for what they have written against one in public."

"In old days men had the rack. Now they have the press."

"In America the President reigns for four years, and Journalism governs for ever and ever."

"People sometimes inquire what form of government is most suitable for an artist to live under. To this question there is only one answer. The form of government that is most suitable to the artist is no government at all. Authority over him and his art is ridiculous."

"There are as many perfections as there are imperfect men. And while to the claims of charity a man may yield and yet be free, to the claims of conformity no man may yield and remain free at all."

"There are three kinds of despots. There is the despot who tyrannises over the body. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul. There is the despot who tyrannises over the soul and body alike. The first is called the Prince. The second is called the Pope. The third is called the People."

"The only thing that one really knows about human nature is that it changes. Change is the one quality we can predicate of it. The systems that fail are those that rely on the permanency of human nature, and not on its growth and development. The error of Louis XIV was that he thought human nature would always be the same. The result of his error was the French Revolution. It was an admirable result. All the results of the mistakes of governments are quite admirable."

"Selfishness is not living as one wishes to live, it is asking others to live as one wishes to live."

"A man who does not think for himself does not think at all."

"For what man has sought for is, indeed, neither pain nor pleasure, but simply Life. Man has sought to live intensely, fully, perfectly. When he can do so without exercising restraint on others, or suffering it ever, and his activities are all pleasurable to him, he will be saner, healthier, more civilised, more himself. Pleasure is Nature's test, her sign of approval. When man is happy, he is in harmony with himself and his environment."

"It was a fatal day when the public discovered that the pen is mightier than the paving-stone, and can be made as offensive as the brickbat. They at once sought for the journalist, found him, developed him, and made him their industrious and well-paid servant. It is greatly to be regretted, for both their sakes. Behind the barricade there may be much that is noble and heroic. But what is there behind the leading-article but prejudice, stupidity, cant, and twaddle? And when these four are joined together they make a terrible force, and constitute the new authority."

"In the old days men had the rack. Now they have the Press. That is an Improvement certainly. but still it is very bad, and wrong, and demoralising. Somebody - was it Burke? - called journalism the fourth estate. That was true at the time, no doubt. But at the present moment it really is the only estate. It has eaten up the other three. The Lords Temporal say nothing, The Lords Spiritual have nothing to say and the House of Commons has nothing to say and says it. We are dominated by journalism."

"In America, the President reigns for four years, and journalism governs for ever and ever. Fortunately, in America journalism has carried its authority to the grossest and most brutal extreme. As a natural consequence it has begun to create a spirit of revolt, people are amused by it, or disgusted by it, according to their temperaments. but it is no longer the real force it was. It is not seriously treated. In England, journalism, except in a few well-known instances, not having been carried to such excesses of brutality, is still a great factor, a remarkable power. The tyranny that it proposes to exercise over people's private lives seems to me to be quite extraordinary."

"Here we allow absolute freedom to the journalist and entirely limit the artist. English public opinion, that is to say, tries to constrain and impede and warp the man who makes things that are beautiful in effect, and compels the journalist to retail things that are ugly, or disgusting, or revolting in fact, so that we have the most serious journalists in the world and the most indecent newspapers."

"The fact is, that the public have an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing. Journalism, conscious of this, and having tradesmanlike habits, supplies their demands"

"It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious."

"Nowadays we are all of us so hard up that the only pleasant things to pay are compliments. They're the only things we can pay."

"I can resist everything except temptation."

"Life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it."

"I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly."

"My experience is that as soon as people are old enough to know better, they don't know anything at all."

"Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship."

"My own business always bores me to death. I prefer other people's."

"Gossip is charming! History is merely gossip. But scandal is gossip made tedious by morality."

"We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

"Mrs. Allonby: They say, Lady Hunstanton, that when good Americans die they go to Paris. Lady Hunstanton: Indeed? And when bad Americans die, where do they go to? Lord Illingworth: Oh, they go to America."

"The youth of America is their oldest tradition. It has been going on now for three hundred years."

"The English country gentleman galloping after a fox — the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable."

"Kelvil: May I ask, Lord Illingworth, if you regard the House of Lords as a better institution than the House of Commons? Lord Illingworth: A much better institution of course. We in the House of Lords are never in touch with public opinion. That makes us a civilised body."

"Lord Illingworth: The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden. Mrs. Allonby: It ends with Revelations."

"Lady Hunstanton: But do you believe all that is written in the newspapers? Lord Illingworth: I do. Nowadays it is only the unreadable that occurs."

"Lord Illingworth: Women have become too brilliant. Nothing spoils a romance so much as a sense of humour in the woman. Mrs. Allonby: Or the want of it in the man."