This food-and-shelter theory concerning man's efforts is without insight. The desire for praise is more imperative than the desire for food and shelter

The true believer, no matter how rowdy and violent his acts, is basically an obedient and submissive person.

The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless. It is a pleasant surprise to ourselves.

There are similarities between absolute power and absolute faith: a demand for absolute obedience, a readiness to attempt the impossible, a bias for simple solutionsto cut the knot rather than unravel it, the viewing of compromise as surrender. Both absolute power and absolute faith are instruments of dehumanization. Hence, absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.

To believe that if we could have but this or that we would be happy is to suppress the realization that the cause of our unhappiness is in our inadequate and blemished selves. Excessive desire is thus a means of suppressing our sense of worthlessness.

In human affairs, the best stimulus for running ahead is to have something we must run from.

In human affairs every solution serves only to sharpen the problem, to show us more clearly what we are up against. There are no final solutions.