I have spoken so far only of the blissful visionary experience? But visionary experience is not always blissful. It's sometimes terrible. There is hell as well as heaven.

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

... the greater part of the population is not very intelligent, dreads responsibility, and desires nothing better than to be told what to do. Provided the rulers do not interfere with its material comforts and its cherished beliefs, it is perfectly happy to let itself be ruled.

Assembled in a crowd, people lose their powers of reasoning and their capacity for moral choice.

Indifference to all the refinements of life--it's really shocking. Just Calvinism, that's all. Calvinism without the excuse of Calvin's theology.

I know the outer world as well as you do, and I judge it. You know nothing of my inner world, and yet you presume to judge that world.

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one's never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.