If power corrupts, the reverse is also true; persecution corrupts the victims though perhaps in subtler and more tragic ways.

The life we led was a proof of man's capacity for adaptation.I think that even the condemned souls in purgatory after time develop a sort of homely routine.That is ,by the way, why most prison memoirs are unreadable.The difficulty of conveying to the reader an idea of a nightmare world from which he has emerged makes the author depict the prisoner's state of mind as an uninterruped continuity of despair.He fears to appear frivolous or to spoil his effect by admitting that even in the depths of misery cheerfulness keeps breaking in.

The jester is brother to the sage.

Adolescence is a kind of emotional seasickness. Both are funny, but only in retrospect.

The inner defenses are unconscious. They consist of a kind of magic aura which the mind builds around cherished belief. Arguments which penetrate into the magic aura are not dealt with rationally but by a specific type of pseudo-reasoning. Absurdities and contradictions are made acceptable by specious rationalizations.

One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up.

If the creator has a purpose in equipping us with a neck, he surely would have meant for us to stick it out.