The well adjusted make poor prophets. A pleasant existence blinds us to the possibilities of drastic change. We cling to what we call our common sense, our practical point of view. Actually, these are names for an all-absorbing familiarity with things as they are. . . . Thus it happens that when the times become unhinged, it is the practical people who are caught unaware . . . still clinging to things that no longer exist.

He who has nothing and wants something is less frustrated than he who has something and wants more.

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

It is doubtful whether the oppressed ever fight for freedom. They fight for pride and power-power to oppress others.

A man by himself is in bad company.

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

It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites-opposite bents, tastes, yearnings, loyalties. Where there is no polarity-where energies flow smoothly in one direction-there will be much doing but no music.