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.

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

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.

There is a time when the word "eventually" has the soothing effect of a promise, and a time when the word evokes in us bitterness and scorn.

Naivete in grownups is often charming; but when coupled with vanity it is indistinguishable from stupidity.

Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.

In running away from ourselves we either fall on our neighbor's shoulder or fly at his throat.