A doctrine insulates the devout not only against the realities around them but also against their own selves. The fanatical believer is not conscious of his envy, malice, pettiness and dishonesty. There is a wall of words between his consciousness and his real self.

The search for happiness is one of the chief sources of unhappiness.

To learn you need a certain degree of confidence, not too much and not too little. If you have too little confidence, you will think you can't learn. If you have too much, you will think you don't have to learn.

The real Antichrist is he who turns the wine of an original idea into the water of mediocrity.

You rarely find a nonconformist who goes it alone.

To lose one's life is but to lose the present; and, clearly, to lose a defiled, worthless present is not to lose much.

There is a radicalism in all getting, and a conservatism in all keeping. Lovemaking is radical, while marriage is conservative.