Man is a luxury-loving animal. Take away play, fancies, and luxuries, and you will turn man into a dull, sluggish creature, barely energetic enough to obtain a bare subsistence. A society becomes stagnant when its people are too rational or too serious to be tempted by baubles.

Someone who thinks the world is always cheating him is right. He is missing that wonderful feeling of trust in someone or something.

Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man's spirit than when we win his heart.

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

The burning conviction that we have a holy duty toward others is often a way of attaching our drowning selves to a passing raft.

Both Faith and Terror are instruments for the elimination of individual self-respect. Terror crushes the autonomy of self-respect, where Faith obtains its more or less voluntary surrender. In both cases, the result of the elimination of individual autonomy is - automatism. Both Faith and Terror reduce the human entity to a formula that can be manipulated at will.

We lie loudest when we lie to ourselves.