It is futile to judge a kind deed by its motives. Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind.

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.

The genuine artist is as much a dissatisfied person as the revolutionary, yet how diametrically opposed are the products each distills from his dissatisfaction.

One of the chief differences between an adult and a juvenile is that the adult knows when he is an ass while the juvenile never does.

The leader personifies the certitude of the creed and the defiance and grandeur of power. He articulates and justifies the resentment damned up in the souls of the frustrated. He kindles the vision of a breath-taking future so as to justify the sacrifice of a transitory present. He stages a world of make-believe so indispensable for the realization of self-sacrifice and united action.

Vehemence is the expression of a blind effort to support and uphold something that can never stand on its own. Whether it is our own meaningless self we are upholding, or some doctrine devoid of evidence, we can do it only in a frenzy of faith.

Though dissenters seem to question everything in sight, they are actually bundles of dusty answers and never conceived a new question. What offends us most in the literature of dissent is the lack of hesitation and wonder.