What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the wish to find out, which is the exact opposite.

My desire and wish is that the things I start with should be so obvious that you wonder why I spend my time stating them. This is what I aim at because the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.

I've made an odd discovery. Every time I talk to a savant I feel quite sure that happiness is no longer a possibility. Yet when I talk with my gardener, I'm convinced of the opposite.

No one gossips about other people's secret virtues.

Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself.

It has been said that man is a rational animal. All my life I have been searching for evidence which could support this.