The nature of oratory is such that there has always been a tendency among politicians and clergymen to oversimplify complex matters. From a pulpit or a platform even the most conscientious of speakers finds it very difficult to tell the whole truth.

Pageantry is a visionary art which has been used, from time immemorial, as a political instrument.

Man is an intelligence in servitude to his organs.

The horror no less than the charm of real life consists precisely in the recurrent actualization of the inconceivable

The fact that people are shocked is the best proof that they need shocking.

The world is an illusion, but an illusion which we must take seriously.

The religions whose theology is least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently less violent and more humane in political practice. Unlike early Judaism, Christianity and Mohammedanism (all obsessed with time) Hinduism and Buddhism have never been persecuting faiths, have preached almost no holy wars and have refrained from that proselytizing religious imperialism which has gone hand in hand with political and economic oppression of colored people.