No matter how eloquently a dog may bark, he cannot tell you that his parents were poor, but honest.

Next to enjoying ourselves, the next greatest pleasure consists in preventing others from enjoying themselves, or, more generally, in the acquisition of power.

Almost all education has a political motive: it aims at strengthening some group, national or religious or even social, in the competition with other groups. It is this motive, in the main, which determines the subjects taught, the knowledge offered and the knowledge withheld, and also decides what mental habits the pupils are expected to acquire. Hardly anything is done to foster the inward growth of mind and spirit; in fact, those who have had the most education are very often atrophied in their mental and spiritual life.

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

The first step in wisdom, as well as in morality, is to open the windows of the ego as wide as possible.

It is obviously possible that what we call waking life may only be an unusual and persistent nightmare.

One of the symptoms of approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important, and that to take a holiday would bring all kinds of disaster. If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considered his or her work important.