He wanted nothing, for the time being, except to understand .... Without advice, assistance or plan, he began reading an incongruous assortment of books; he would find some passage which he could not understand in one book, and he would get another on that subject .... There was no order in his reading; but there was order in what remained of it in his mind.

Ask yourself why totalitarian dictatorships find it necessary to pour money and effort into propaganda for their own helpless, chained, gagged slaves, who have no means of protest or defense. The answer is that even the humblest peasant or the lowest savage would rise in blind rebellion, were he to realize that he is being immolated, not to some incomprehensible noble purpose, but to plain, naked human evil.

Every period ruled by mystics was an era of stagnation and want, when most men were on strike against existence.

There is only one source of authentic self-confidence: reason.

The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.

To fear to face an issue is to believe that the worst is true.

I can accept anything, except what seems to be the easiest for most people: the half-way, the almost, the just-about, the in-between.