The fundamental defect of fathers, in our competitive society, is that they want their children to be a credit to them.
Freedom in general may be defined as the absence of obstacles to the realization of desires.
Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear.
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd.
Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.
Obscenity is whatever happens to shock some elderly and ignorant magistrate.
A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgment based upon it.
The megalomaniac differs from the narcissist by the fact that he wishes to be powerful rather than charming, and seeks to be feared rather than loved. To this type belong many lunatics and most of the great men of history.
I would never die for my beliefs because I might be wrong.
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones.
Collective fear stimulates herd instinct, and tends to produce ferocity toward those who are not regarded as members of the herd.
Liberty is the right to do what I like; license, the right to do what you like.
Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.
Science is what you know, philosophy is what you don't know.