If this Isn't Nice, What Is?

So I hope that you will do the same for the rest of your lives. When things are going sweetly and peacefully, please pause a moment, and then say out loud, "If this isn’t nice, what is?

You want to know what the British mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell called this planet? He said it was "the Lunatic Asylum of the Universe." And he said the inmates had taken over, and we were tormenting each other and trashing the joint. And he wasn’t talking about the germs or the elephants. He meant we the people.

On the subject of homosexuality: If you really want to hurt your parents, and you don’t have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. And in a few minutes I’ll give a lesson in creative writing.

I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other

"We have to be constantly jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."

"You’re learning that you do not inhabit a solid, reliable social structure—that the older people around you are worried, moody, goofy human beings who themselves were little kids only a few days ago. So homes can fall apart and schools can fall apart, usually for childish reasons..."

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to maintain it.

sane person in an insane society must appear insane

It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us."