We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.

Peace is a necessary condition of spirituality, no less than an inevitable result of it.

The legs, for example, of that chair--how miraculous their tubularity, how supernatural their polished smoothness! I spent several minutes--or was it several centuries?--not merely gazing at those bamboo legs, but actually being them---or rather being myself in them; or, to be still more accurate (for "I" was not involved in the case, nor in a certain sense were "they") being my Not-self in the Not-self which was the chair.

One of the principal functions of a friend is to suffer (in a milder and symbolic form) the punishments that we should like, but are unable, to inflict upon our enemies.

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

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.

Generalized intelligence and mental alertness are the most powerful enemies of dictatorship and at the same time the basic conditions of effective democracy.