A successful social technique consists perhaps in finding unobjectionable means for individual self-assertion.

We have to adjust ourselves, and every radical adjustment is a crisis in self-esteem: we undergo a test, we have to prove ourselves.

We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the remarkable fact that many inventions had their birth as toys.

There is probably nothing more sublime than discontent transmuted into a work of art, a scientific discovery, and so on.

First something is a great idea, then it becomes a cause, then it becomes a business and finally it becomes a racket.

One of the chief differences between an adult and a juvenile is that the adult knows when he is an ass while the juvenile never does.

To our real, naked selves there is not a thing on earth or in heaven worth dying for. It is only when we see ourselves as actors in a staged (and therefore unreal) performance that death loses its frightfulness and finality and becomes an act of make-believe and a theatrical gesture. It is one of the main tasks of a real leader to mask the grim reality of dying and killing by evoking in his followers the illusion that they are participating in a grandiose spectacle, a solemn or lighthearted dramatic performance.