Unlimited opportunities can be as potent a cause of frustration as a paucity or lack of opportunities.

No totalitarian censor can approach the implacability of the censor who controls the line of communication between the outer world and our consciousness. Nothing is allowed to reach us which might weaken our confidence and lower our morale. To most of us nothing is so invisible as an unpleasant truth.

The aspiration toward freedom is the most essentially human of all human manifestations.

There are many who find a good alibi far more attractive than an achievement. For an achievement does not settle anything permanently. We still have to prove our worth anew each day; we have to prove that we are as good today as we were yesterday. But when we have a valid alibi for not achieving anything we are fixed, so to speak, for life.

It is a talent of the weak to persuade themselves that they suffer for something when they suffer from something; that they are showing the way when they are running away; that they see the light when they feel the heat; that they are chosen when they are shunned.

The weakness of a soul is proportionate to the number of truths that must be kept from it.

Resistance, whether to one's appetites or to the ways of the world, is a chief factor in the shaping of character.