“No satisfaction based upon self-deception is solid, and however unpleasant the truth may be, it is better to face it once and for all, to get used to it, and to proceed to build your life in accordance with it.”

“We need a morality based upon love of life, upon pleasure in growth and positive achievement, not upon repression and prohibition.”

“Human nature being what it is, people will insist upon getting some pleasure out of life.”

“The Ten Commandments that, as a teacher, I should wish to promulgate, might be set forth as follows:1- Do not feel absolutely certain of anything.2- Do not think it worth while to proceed by concealing evidence, for the evidence is sure to come to light.3- Never try to discourage thinking for you are sure to succeed.4- When you meet with opposition, even if it should be from your husband or your children, endeavor to overcome it by argument and not by authority, for a victory dependent upon authority is unreal and illusory.5- Have no respect for the authority of others, for there are always contrary authorities to be found.6- Do not use power to suppress opinions you think pernicious, for if you do the opinions will suppress you.7- Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric.8- Find more pleasure in intelligent dissent than in passive agreement, for, if you value intelligence as you should, the former implies a deeper agreement than the latter.9- Be scrupulously truthful, even if the truth is inconvenient, for it is more inconvenient when you try to conceal it.10- Do not feel envious of the happiness of those who live in a fool’s paradise, for only a fool will think that it is happiness.”

“Nevertheless, when it is your lot to have to endure something that is (or seems to you) worse than the ordinary lot of mankind, Spinoza's principle of thinking about the whole, or at any rate about larger matters than your own grief, is a useful one. There are even times when it is comforting to reflect that human life, with all that is contains of evil and suffering, is an infinitesimal part of the life of the universe. Such reflections may not suffice to constitute a religion, but in a painful world they are a help towards sanity and an antidote to the paralysis of utter despair. - about Spinoza”

“Curious learning not only makes unpleasant things less unpleasant but also makes pleasant things more pleasant.”

“Noone has yet succeeded in inventing a philosophy at once credible and self-consistent. Locke aimed at credibility, and achieved it at the expense of consistency. Most of the great philosophers have done the opposite. A philosophy which is not self-consistent cannot be wholly true, but a philosophy which is self-consistent can very well be wholly false. The most fruitful philosophies have contained glaring inconsistencies, but for that very reason have been partially true. There is no reason to suppose that a self-consistent system contains more truth than one which, like Locke’s, is more or less wrong.”