Alphabetical Index of Authors

1. There is no nonsense so arrant that it cannot be made the creed of the vast majority by adequate governmental action.
2. The degree of one's emotions varies inversely with one's knowledge of the facts.
3. Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.
4. Reason is a harmonising, controlling force rather than a creative one.
5. War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
6. All movements go too far.
7. The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.
8. The most savage controversies are about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way.
9. To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness.
10. The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists. That is why they invented Hell.
11. The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
12. We are faced with the paradoxical fact that education has become one of the chief obstacles to intelligence and freedom of thought.
13. Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
14. A happy life must be to a great extent a quiet life, for it is only in an atmosphere of quiet that true joy dare live.
15. It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly.