which is better - to be born stupid into an intelligent society or intelligent into an insane one?

Armaments, universal debt, and planned obsolescence - those are the three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and moneylenders were abolished, you'd collapse. And while you people are overconsuming the rest of the world sinks more and more deeply into chronic disaster.

But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.

A bad book is as much of a labor to write as a good one, it comes as sincerely from the author's soul.

The mockery made him feel an outsider; and feeling an outsider he behaved like one, which increased the prejudice against him and intensified the contempt and hostility aroused by his physical defects. Which in turn increased his sense of being alien and alone. A chronic fear of being slighted made him avoid his equals, made him stand, where his inferiors were concerned, self-consciously on his dignity.

The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence.

To see ourselves as others see us is a most salutary gift. Hardly less important is the capacity to see others as they see themselves.