William Inge
We have enslaved the rest of the animal creation, and have treated our distant cousins in fur and feathers so badly that beyond doubt, if they were able to formulate a religion, they would depict the Devil in human form.Collection: Environmental
The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values.Collection: Knowledge
The wisdom of the wise is an uncommon degree of common sense.Collection: Wisdom
The enemies of freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot.Collection: Freedom
A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbours.Collection: Patriotism
True faith is belief in the reality of absolute values.Collection: Faith
The happiest people seem to be those who have no particular cause for being happy except that they are so.Collection: Happiness
It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed, when that little wisdom is its own.Collection: Wisdom
A good government remains the greatest of human blessings and no nation has ever enjoyed it.Collection: Government
Whoever marries the spirit of this age will find himself a widower in the next.Collection: Age
I have no fear that the candle lighted in Palestine years ago will ever be put out.Collection: Fear
Literature flourishes best when it is half a trade and half an art.Collection: Communication
Nobody is bored when he is trying to make something that is beautiful, or to discover something that is true.Collection: Imagination
Democracy is only an experiment in government, and it has the obvious disadvantage of merely counting votes instead of weighing them.Collection: Government
Worry is interest paid on trouble before it comes due.
Originality is undetected plagiarism.
It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.
Gambling is a disease of barbarians superficially civilized.
There are no rewards or punishments - only consequences.
Theater is, of course, a reflection of life. Maybe we have to improve life before we can hope to improve theater.
The soul is dyed with the color of its leisure thoughts.
A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he can't sit on it.
What is originality? Undetected plagiarism.
The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he is born.
A cat can be trusted to purr when she is pleased, which is more than can be said for human beings.
No Christian can be a pessimist, for Christianity is a system of radical optimism.
The wise man is he who knows the relative value of things.
Bereavement is the sharpest challenge to our trust in God; if faith can overcome this, there is no mountain which it cannot remove.
Faith always contains an element of risk, of venture; and we are impelled to make the venture by the affinity and attraction which we feel in ourselves.
Faith is an act of rational choice, which determines us to act as if certain things were true, and in the confident expectation that they will prove to be true.
Love remembered and consecrated by grief belongs, more clearly than the happy intercourse of friends, to the eternal world; it has proved itself stronger than death.
Prayer gives a man the opportunity of getting to know a gentleman he hardly ever meets. I do not mean his maker, but himself.
If the universe is running down like a clock, the clock must have been wound up at a date which we could name if we knew it. The world, if it is to have an end in time, must have had a beginning in time.
To become a popular religion, it is only necessary for a superstition to enslave a philosophy.
It takes in reality only one to make a quarrel. It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.
We tolerate shapes in human beings that would horrify us if we saw them in a horse.
All faith consists essentially in the recognition of a world of spiritual values behind, yet not apart from, the world of natural phenomena.
Don't get up from the feast of life without paying for your share of it.
Public opinion, a vulgar, impertinent, anonymous tyrant who deliberately makes life unpleasant for anyone who is not content to be the average person.
Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love.
I have never understood why it should be considered derogatory to the Creator to suppose that he has a sense of humour.
Events in the past may be roughly divided into those which probably never happened and those which do not matter.
Many people believe that they are attracted by God, or by Nature, when they are only repelled by man.
Consciousness is a phase of mental life which arises in connection with the formation of new habits. When habit is formed, consciousness only interferes to spoil our performance.
I think middle-age is the best time, if we can escape the fatty degeneration of the conscience which often sets in at about fifty.
Every institution not only carries within it the seeds of its own dissolution, but prepares the way for its most hated rival.
In dealing with Englishmen you can be sure of one thing only, that the logical solution will not be adopted.
To marry is to get a binocular view of life.
The object of studying philosophy is to know one's own mind, not other people's.
Let none of us delude himself by supposing that honesty is always the best policy. It is not.