If you can't explain what you are doing to a nine-year-old, then either you still don't understand it very well, or it's not all that worthwile in the first place.

If men as individuals surrender to the call of their elementary instincts, avoiding pain and seeking satisfaction only for their own selves, the result for them all taken together must be a state of insecurity, of fear, and of promiscuous misery.

The satisfaction of physical needs is indeed the indispensable pre-condition of a satisfactory existence, but in itself it is not enough. In order to be content, men must also have the possibility of developing their intellectual and artistic powers to whatever extent accords with their personal characteristics and abilities.

But their intervention makes our acts to serve ever less merely the immediate claims of our instincts.

He who joyfully marches to music in rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would suffice.

The true value of a human being can be found in the degree to which he has attained liberation from the self.

To a student: Dear Miss - I have read about sixteen pages of your manuscript . . . I suffered exactly the same treatment at the hands of my teachers who disliked me for my independence and passed over me when they wanted assistants. . . . Keep your manuscript for your sons and daughters, in order that they may derive consolation from it and not give a damn for what their teachers tell them or think of them. . . . There is too much education altogether.