The hunger for facile wisdom is the root of all false philosophy

Every false philosophy is an imagination of a world propitious to irrational demands and unregulated desires. The false philosopher's dream infects someone in closer touch than himself with everyday experience, this agent of his desire seeks to translate the dream into reality, and disaster follows. It is the Cinderella story in actual life. Rousseau was Robespierre's fairy godmother, Karl Marx was Lenin's, Nietzsche was Hitler's.

"The pathetic thing that grows out of this condition is called faith: in other words, closing one's eyes upon one's self once for all, to avoid suffering the sight of incurable falsehood. People erect a concept of morality, of virtue, of holiness upon this false view of all things; they ground good conscience upon faulty vision; they argue that no other sort of vision has value any more, once they have made theirs sacrosanct with the names of "God," "salvation" and "eternity." I unearth this theological instinct in all directions: it is the most widespread and the most subterranean form of falsehood to be found on earth."

The word "philosophy" carries unfortunate connotations: impractical, unworldly, weird.

To believe all men honest is folly. To believe none is something worse.

Philosophy's error is to be too endurable.

If this is philosophy it is at any rate a philosophy that is not in its right mind.

All philosophies, if you ride them home, are nonsense, but some are greater nonsense than others.

It is my firm conviction that man has nothing to gain, emotionally or otherwise, by adhering to a falsehood, regardless of how comfortable or sacred that falsehood may appear. Anyone who claims, on the one hand, that he is concerned with human welfare, and who demands, on the other hand, that man must suspend or renounce the use of his reason, is contradicting himself.

The most common of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.

Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all, in my view, is not to have one.

The man who claims to have no need of philosophy is the one most apt to be fooled by it.

Every man has his folly, but the greatest folly of all … is not to have one.

The most costly of all follies is to believe passionately in the palpably not true. It is the chief occupation of mankind.