The unpredictability inherent in human affairs is due largely to the fact that the by-products of a human process are more fateful than the product.

We are more prone to generalize the bad than the good. We assume that the bad is more potent and contagious.

It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millenia.

A plant needs roots in order to grow. With man it is the other way around: only when he grows does he have roots and feels at home in the world.

The hardest thing to cope with is not selfishness or vanity or deceitfulness, but sheer stupidity.

Facts are counterrevolutionary.

A sublime religion inevitably generates a strong feeling of guilt. There is an unavoidable contrast between loftiness of profession and imperfection of practice. And, as one would expect, the feeling of guilt promotes hate and brazenness. Thus it seems that the more sublime the faith the more virulent the hatred it breeds.