A thing may be morally neutral and yet the desire for that thing may be dangerous.

The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation.

Selfishness has never been admired.

This is our dilemma--either to taste and not to know or to know and not to taste--or, more strictly, to lack one kind of knowledge because we are in an experience or to lack another kind because we are outside it. [. . .] Of this tragic dilemma myth is the partial solution. In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction.

You all know," said the Guide, "that security is mortals' greatest enemy.

If minds are wholly dependent on brains and brains on biochemistry, and biochemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees.

This world is a great sculptor's shop. We are the statues and there is a rumor going round the shop that some of us are some day going to come to life.