The mystical impulse in men is somehow a desire to possess the universe. In women, it's a desire to be possessed.

Our language has become a tired and inefficient thing in the hands of journalists and writers who have nothing to say.

The "passion for incredulity" can produce as much self-deception as the uncritical will to believe.

The self-surmounter can never put up with the man who has ceased to be dissatisfied with himself.

Isaiah Berlin once said that there are two kinds of writers, hedgehogs and foxes. He said the fox knows many things, the hedgehog knows just one thing. So Shakespeare is a typical fox; Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky are typical hedgehogs. Now, I'm a typical hedgehog. I know just one thing, and I repeat it over and over again. I try to approach it from different angles to make it look different, but it's the same thing.

Turning on the light is easy if you know where the switch is.

The visionary disciplines himself to see the world always as if he had only just seen it for the first time.