The Ethics of Belief (1877), The Weight Of Authority
Homosexuality: Bipotenitality, Terminology, and History
Diary (6 April 1886)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)
“There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.”
Sir Joshua Reynolds. Edison liked the quote and posted it around his factory.
Misattributed
The Serpent, in Pt. V
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)
“There is no expedient to which a man will not resort to avoid the real labor of thinking.”
Quoted in Time magazine December 8, 1930
Other
"Nietzscheism and Realism" from The Rainbow, Vol. I, No. 1 (October 1921); reprinted in "To Quebec and the Stars", and also in Collected Essays, Volume 5: Philosophy edited by S. T. Joshi, p. 70
Non-Fiction
Context: It must be remembered that there is no real reason to expect anything in particular from mankind; good and evil are local expedients—or their lack—and not in any sense cosmic truths or laws. We call a thing "good" because it promotes certain petty human conditions that we happen to like—whereas it is just as sensible to assume that all humanity is a noxious pest and should be eradicated like rats or gnats for the good of the planet or of the universe. There are no absolute values in the whole blind tragedy of mechanistic nature—nothing is good or bad except as judged from an absurdly limited point of view. The only cosmic reality is mindless, undeviating fate—automatic, unmoral, uncalculating inevitability. As human beings, our only sensible scale of values is one based on lessening the agony of existence. That plan is most deserving of praise which most ably fosters the creation of the objects and conditions best adapted to diminish the pain of living for those most sensitive to its depressing ravages. To expect perfect adjustment and happiness is absurdly unscientific and unphilosophical. We can seek only a more or less trivial mitigation of suffering. I believe in an aristocracy, because I deem it the only agency for the creation of those refinements which make life endurable for the human animal of high organisation.
“A Friedman doctrine‐- The Social Responsibility Of Business Is to Increase Its Profits” (Sept. 1970)
