Social improvement is attained more readily by a concern with the quality of results than with the purity of motives.

Freedom means freedom from forces and circumstances which would turn man into a thing, which would impose on man the passivity and predictability of matter. By this test, absolute power is the manifestation most inimical to human uniqueness. Absolute power wants to turn people into malleable clay.

There is a guilty conscience behind every brazen word and act and behind every manifestation of self-righteousness.

The difficult and risky task of meeting and mastering the new . . . is not undertaken by the vanguard of society but by its rear. It is the misfits, failures, fugitives, outcasts and their like who are among the first to grapple with the new.

The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious.

A war is not won if the defeated enemy has not been turned into a friend.

The remarkable thing is that it is the crowded life that is most easily remembered. A life full of turns, achievements, disappointments, surprises, and crises is a life full of landmarks. The empty life has even its few details blurred, and cannot be remembered with certainty.